


In the Shadow of a Flame

by AStarlightMonbebe



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Airbender Ty Lee (Avatar), Angst and Feels, Avatar Ty Lee (Avatar), Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Earthbender Mai (Avatar), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Metalbender Mai (Avatar), Multi, Nonbender Zuko (Avatar), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Romance is only implied, Waterbender Yue (Avatar), Zuko (Avatar)-centric, avatar swap!au, azula loves her brother and no one else, but like it's canon if you hit it with a boomerang, but with many other povs, he's so bad both his kids decide to commit treason, the title means things ok, this whole fic is just them going on their life changing field trip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 80,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24781978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AStarlightMonbebe/pseuds/AStarlightMonbebe
Summary: For years, Zuko has believed the Fire Nation to be unstoppable. That is, until an iceberg washes up on his ship and leaves the long lost Avatar behind - except this Avatar is a fifteen year old girl who hasn't fought a day in her life and is wholly unprepared to stop a war and save the world. Armed with only his dual dao swords, his sister's bending, and the Avatar's skills, Zuko, Azula, and Ty Lee set out to master the elements and stop the Fire Lord, all while the clock ticks down to the end of summer and enemies surrounding them.They say the shadow of a flame casts its own light, and they shine the brightest of them all.a.k.a. the swap!au where Ty Lee is the Avatar, Zuko's a banished swordsman, Azula is a firebending master, also eventually featuring waterbender Yue and earth and metalbender Mai
Relationships: Azula & Mai & Ty Lee & Yue & Zuko (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Yue & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 221
Kudos: 471
Collections: Fave atla fics





	1. 一

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I'll try to be concise writing this, but here's a few notes before we begin:
> 
> This idea started from a thought about the Fire Nation gang as Water Tribe, then it transformed into this whole au. It's my first time writing ATLA fanfic in four years, so a lot has changed, but I recently rewatched the show with my brothers and fell in love all over again, so as I always do, I decided to write a long fic. Yeah. We'll see how this works out.
> 
> It's gonna be a three arc story (for each book) - originally I was going to do 16 chapters, so 5 chapters for each arc, but I decided to change it to 7 chapters for each book + an epilogue. Chapters will be long, 5k+, and even that's probably an underestimate because I have a tendency to ramble type. It loosely follows canon, but it's more like I took my favorite episodes, put them in a mixing bowl, and then proceeded to hit canon with a frying pan, so it's not that canon compliant, but it's still based on canon. The only beta I have is myself, so bear with me, please. It starts off kind of slow, but I urge you to stick around; I outlined like I've never outlined before for this, and I. Will. Write. It. *screams*
> 
> As I said, this is my first attempt at atla fanfic, the characters are a bit ooc, but I'm trying to get a hang of them. More notes will be at the end, but enjoy!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include implied child abuse and mentions of genocide (because Air Nomads rip :( )

The waters of the Southern Sea were unrelenting. The storm had been raging for days, waves battering the small Fire Nation ship as torrents poured from overhead, making the metal that usually stood so strong nothing more than a slippery mess. Thunder cracked across the sky as lightning tore across it, as bold and vicious as the sea itself.

Still, Zuko stood on the deck of it, bare fingers gripping the rail as the ocean roiled beneath him and the ship tipped back and forth. The water poured off of him in sheets, his clothes clinging to him, and it was _cold_ , but the noise drowned out anything else.

Zuko had always liked storms. Even ones that were trying to kill him.

“Agni, it’s cold,” a voice hissed, bitter and cutting through the sharp winds. Zuko had to turn his head fully to see his sister approach him from his left side, dressed in her gleaming gold and red, flames crackling lightly around her in a vain attempt to keep her dry.

“Hi, Azula,” he said with a sigh.

“What are you doing out here, Zuzu?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow. “Do you think the Avatar is going to appear out of the water for some inexplicable reason?”

“Maybe,” Zuko mumbled, turning back to the stormy expanse in front of him. Azula sighed heavily, inching closer to him. He could feel the faint warmth radiating from her, her mouth set in a thin line of disapproval at his actions. He felt the old, sour tang of jealousy in his throat, at how simple firebending was to her, how easily flame flickered to his fingertips.

Zuko had tried to produce fire and flame for thirteen years before realizing that he would never be a bender, and even if he _was_ a bender, he would never be good enough. Not for his father. 

Lightning cracked across the sky and Zuko jumped back as his sister redirected it away from them with a crackle and a tinge, the air around them humming with electricity for a short second. She eyed the bolt distastefully as it disappeared into the water, waves enveloping the last sparks quickly. 

“We should go home, soon,” she murmured, blowing off her fingertips, which were smoking. Zuko readjusted himself, leaving more space between them, even if it did mean the heat emanating from her body was only faint tendrils.

He laughed. “ _You_ can go home soon.” They both knew it was unlikely Zuko would ever step foot into the Caldera ever again—no, not even _home_ home; he wouldn’t even be able to enter Fire Nation waters without being gunned down or arrested. There would be no entering the Fire Nation unscathed, especially when he had been at sea for three years with little success as he chased the flitting dream of the Avatar and tried to ignore the fact that it was just that: a dream, and a hopeless one.

Azula sighed in annoyance. “What’s the fun of going home if you’re not there?” she asked, petulantly. 

Zuko shook his head. He had never understood the logic his fourteen year old sister had went by when she had declared she would be accompanying him for his search for the Avatar last year; it was a punishment, a curse, not an adventure, and certainly not what she should be wasting her time on when her firebending prowess was sure to grow even more. There was no reason his father’s favorite child would go with his banished disgrace of a son, except to torment him.

Surprisingly, Azula had become a source of company for him. One Zuko would almost call welcome—trouble rarely found them when they saw her behind him, one finger burning a cold blue flame, with Zhao being the exception. Apparently, his need to harass Zuko wasn’t overridden by Zuko’s somewhat psychotic younger sister. There was also the fact that Zuko had spent two years with a crew where the youngest was still fifteen years older than them, every single one of them having seen the war and failed at it. His crew had been brought from the corners of the Fire Nation, from the ones who had been dishonorably discharged to the ones that were downright mutinous—the only thing Zuko had learned from them was how to curse like he had been born on the seas instead of baptized in them. 

The rain dripped down his face, cold against the old burn. Zuko’s fingers twitched, brushing it in an old habit, before he quickly forced them down and away, letting the water run over the grooved tissue. He felt the old pain of the burn sear across it, a phantom pain of when his skin had been there, of when his skin had been melting away as his father’s hand cupped his face like another father might do to comfort their child.

 _You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher_ , he remembered his father saying as his eyes gleamed gold and his fire flared white hot. 

_Haven’t I suffered enough?_ the selfish part of Zuko wanted to ask, the self entitled child who had been willfully ignorant of the world around him and the love his father did not have to give to someone like him.

“Zuko!” Azula’s harsh voice cut through his thoats, a searing hot hand pulling him back from the edge just as a wave curled and crashed down across the deck, seawater spilling forward with its white caps and salt. The railing where Zuko had been standing seemed to crumple and bend at the force of the water.

His sister’s hand was still gripping his collar, and Zuko could feel the heat in it, smell the acrid smoke wafting from it. He wondered, briefly, what it was like to be warm all the time. He was so cold; it had chilled him to his bones. 

The reminder of the cold was enough to melt the numbness in his brain that always came over him when he remembered his father’s fire, burning so hot it felt like the ice of his wrath. 

“It’s dangerous out here,” he said, his voice ringing in his ears. “You should go inside with the rest of the crew.” 

“Why, so you can drown yourself out here _peacefully_?” Azula spat, fist twisting in his shirt and knuckles grazing his neck, sending hot pain spiking through it. Zuko wouldn’t be surprised if he turned and saw her hand ignited with blue flame; Azula was always carefully controlled, but she was prone to letting her fire out when her emotions rose, her firebending fluctuating with her anger with an ease Zuko had always wished to achieve.

Well, in order to achieve that ease, he’d have to be a firebender in the first place. 

“Maybe,” Zuko told her with a glare, but was cut off from finishing it as the sky above them darkened and he and his sister looked up to see a tall wave tower over the deck of the Wani for one agonizingly long second, before crashing down.

He was underwater and he couldn’t breathe. The water roared in his head, louder than anything else, absolutely deafening. Zuko felt the pressure on his body, as if he was a metal can made to be crushed beneath the earth, except the harsh waters were much less forgiving than the soft soil of the land he had not touched in months. It was dark everywhere he looked, and his vision was already blurry.

He was being swept out to sea, Zuko was sure. He would drown, his bones sinking to the bottom of the sea slowly, the saltwater wearing away at every part of him. All the scars would be gone, the bump parts of bones that had healed wrong smoothed over and weathered away until he was no longer Zuko, but just another skeleton swallowed up by La and left to rot away slowly.

Then he slammed back into metal and the wave was gone, leaving Zuko alone on the edges of the deck, one cold hand finding the railing behind him and gripping it tightly. He looked for his sister first, only to see her diagonal from him, coughing up seawater with steam wafting off her body as she dried herself.

More importantly, there was an iceberg on the deck of the Wani.

For a moment, Zuko simply _looked_ at it, struggling to comprehend the enormity of what he was seeing. Ice twisted around and around in an almost perfect spherical shape, imbued with a strange crystal blue light that seemed to be gleaming from the inside. There was a shape inside of it, Zuko realized, the lines and form warped by the frozen sheen concealing it, but there was still something unmistakably human about it.

It was, by all means, an impossible discovery. Ice blocks weren’t something just brought by the waves, even this close to the Southern Pole.

“Lala,” Zuko managed, turning to his sister. The storm above them seemed to have quieted, the rain falling down lightly, even though a glance behind him showed that the ocean was still howling. It was almost as if they were in the eye of the storm, surrounded by this inexplicable calmness.

Or, Zuko realized as he looked back at the sphere of ice, as if the eye of the storm had come to them.

“Shall we blast this thing apart?” Azula asked, a hungry look in her eyes as she surveyed the ice sphere. Her fingers pointed together neatly, and the smell of ozone was sharp in the air as it filled with the tangible crackle of energy. Zuko held his breath and leaned back against the railing, watching his younger sister with the same horrible fascination he always did as lightning cracked down from the sky, met her fingers, and sliced through the frozen ice.

There was silence, and then an earth shattering sound split the air as the sphere cracked, Zuko flinching back reflexively as fissures appeared and the ice sphere splintered apart. He could only watch as the ice fell apart and dissolved into water that sloshed across the deck, sliding off as the boat tilted with the swell of the water beneath it.

In the midst of it all, there was a girl. She seemed to float in the air, robes of soft yellow and orange swirling around her, eyes closed and head tilted to the sky. There was some kind of beast behind her—something large and slumbering, a breed Zuko couldn’t recall ever seeing before, but seemed to tug at his memory anyways.

The girl’s eyes snapped open and Zuko stumbled back, the metal railing cutting into his spine. Her eyes were silver and glowing with a ferocious power not even Azula had been able to channel before. 

She looked at them for a long moment, and Zuko wasn’t sure if she was _seeing_ them at all, and then the light faded from her eyes and she collapsed lifelessly onto the deck, looking small amidst the water and the metal and the creature that seemed to curl around her.

Zuko found his footing first, pushing past his sister, whose head was still tilted questioningly at the girl from the ice. He knelt in front of the girl, gently turning her onto her back and taking her pulse. To his surprise, it was flickering wildly beneath his fingertips—but then again, Azula had just electrocuted the ice mass she had been in.

There was a blue arrow on her forehead, Zuko observed, as well as peeking out onto the backs of her hands and her bare feet. The realization hit him later than it should have: _Air Nomad._

But all the Air Nomads were dead. Zuko had seen the evidence of his ancestor’s slaughter firsthand when he had visited the four Air Temples during the first year of his banishment. He had seen the skeletons, stacked neatly in rooms. He had held the skulls of children and burned them with torches, then scattered them to the wind in the hopes of giving them peace, a century too late.

The Air Nomads were dead; Zuko was sure of it.

Yet here this girl was, born from ice and painted with blue arrows, dressed in colors that had not been worn in one hundred years.

There was an idea starting to form in Zuko’s mind, but he refused to broach it, unsure if he could handle the thought amidst the rest of the shock he was going through due to the situation. 

“Is she dead?” Azula asked, her voice ringing in the sudden quiet. The storm had almost completely died off, Zuko noticed, as if it had left with the silver from the unconscious girl’s body.

“No,” he answered, just as the door to the deck slammed open, Lieutenant Jee, the commander of the ship, appearing from the mouth of the belowdecks. He stopped as soon as he saw them, the girl, and the monstrous creature, whatever question that had been in his mouth stuttering away in the face of the scene.

“Lieutenant Jee,” Zuko said, his voice coming out more calmly than he had expected. The older man stilled at the sound of his voice. “It’s in your best interest to find the nearest land mass and dock as soon as possible, unless you want this,” here, he gestured to the creature, “causing the ship to sink.”

“The closest land is the Southern Water Tribe,” the man responded.

“Which has been abandoned for years, has it not?” Azula asked casually, sparks flickering across her knuckles as she examined her fingernails.

Lieutenant Jee eyed them for a long moment, and Zuko thought he was going to deny his orders, as he had come close to doing many times in the past, but, like always, he obeyed with a nod of his head.

“As you wish, Your Highnesses,” he said, disappearing back inside. Zuko frowned. Docking near the ruined remains of a tribe that had been destroyed by the Fire Nation was far from ideal, but it would have to do. He was no stranger to the ruins of war, after all.

He stood, stooping to pick up the girl as well. She was light in his arms, face young when her eyes were closed—she looked to be his sister’s age, maybe fifteen. Pale, unassuming, and almost weightless; Zuko had trouble believing she could hurt anyone, but he had grown out of underestimating his opponents, even ones who didn’t seem to be a potential threat.

“Let’s bring her belowdecks,” he told his sister.

* * *

Later, when the Wani had hit snow covered fields of ice and frozen ground, its anchor digging a deep trench in the unsalted earth, the two of them took tea in the empty cabin they had deposited the Air Nomad girl, sitting at a table across from the bed with their cups. 

Zuko took a sip of his. It tasted disgusting and lukewarm. Across from him, his sister merrily heated her cup until it was boiling, then downed it without even a twitch.

“So, she’s the Avatar,” Zuko said, as calmly as he could. Azula glanced cursorily at the still unconscious girl, the arrows on her body in full view beneath her unmistakably Air Nomad colored clothes. Strangely enough, she didn’t contest his statement, which only served to make his heartbeat speed up more. Azula never had qualms of telling him an idea was stupid if she knew it would hurt him, which meant that the statement was entirely plausible.

The Avatar hadn’t been seen in a hundred years. When the Fire Lord—when his _father_ —had exiled Zuko and stripped him of his honor, telling him he could only be restored if he found the Avatar, Zuko had known it was a hopeless quest. The Air Nomads were dead. The last Avatar had been an airbender—it was why his great grandfather had gone to burn and raze the Air Temples as soon as the Avatar had been announced.

The Avatar should have died a century ago, but there had been no new Avatars. The cycle had not been broken, which meant it had never ended to begin with. And, yet, the war had been raging for a hundred years with no Avatar attempting to stop it, even as the Southern Water Tribe had been wiped out except for a few, lonely boats, and the Earth Kingdom fell, city after city, to the tanks and the komodo rhinos, fire eating across the land as if it was starving.

It was, Zuko supposed, entirely plausible that the Avatar had survived the attack on the Air Temples and frozen themself below the waves in a desperate bid for safety, especially if said Avatar was fifteen, give or take a century.

The thought was enough to make him shaky. He gripped the teacup tighter and took a tentative sip, the tangy water settling into his twisted stomach.

“What are you going to do about it?” Azula asked him, methodically setting her cup down, her fingers wrapped around it. 

“The Avatar is the only person in this world with a chance of restoring peace,” Zuko responded.

“And?” Azula asked drily, one eyebrow lifting skeptically at him.

“Meaning she’s one of the only people who would be able to stop fa—the Fire Lord,” Zuko continued, catching his slip.

Azula paused and pursed her lips. “Where are you going with this, Zuzu?”

Zuko swallowed, carefully judging her reaction. She didn’t seem upset, or like she was going to burn him—at least not yet. 

“I want to stop the war and father,” he said, as calmly as he could. “And you want to be the Fire Lord, don’t you?”

His sister smiled, her eyes glowing eerily electric blue in the reflection of the fire she had sent skipping across her half drunken tea. Zuko imagined, for a split second, the flames leaping up and burning away the rest of his face as punishment for uttering such a treacherous thing aloud.

Instead, Azula continued to smile as the flames died down. “I _like_ this idea, Zuzu,” she said.

* * *

A gust of wind woke Zuko before Agni did, disturbing his sleep and sending him spiralling awake suddenly, panic a jackrabbit in his heart as he felt the beginnings of rays rise somewhere above the metal he was confined in.

He turned and found himself face to face with a frowning Air Nomad. She was sitting up, tugging at the three braids that spilled down her back from the ponytail she had put them in, with her back straight and her legs crossed in a way that reminded Zuko of Azula when she meditated.

“Who are you?” she asked. “And where am I?”

Azula stirred across from Zuko, yawning and sitting up. She rubbed at her eyes and then immediately looked more awake than Zuko had ever felt in his life, regarding the scene with a bright energy dancing across her face. 

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Zuko said as cautiously as possible, but the girl was already looking around, clear dismay on her face.

“Where’s Moshi?!” she cried, rising with a light breeze, her feet barely skimming the ground.

“Your _beast_ is outside,” Azula said. 

“She’s a sky bison,” the airbender snapped back, anxiety clear in her face. “What did you do to her?”

Azula thought for a long, hard minute, and Zuko found himself holding his breath, sure his sister was about to strike this girl down for her impertinence, Avatar or not.

“ _She’s_ outside,” Azula finally repeated. “We can go there, if you’d like.”

The girl paused uncertainly for a moment, then smiled widely and nodded. Zuko blinked. Never before had he met someone so seemingly impervious to his sister’s sharp edges, cutting smiles, and words with double meanings hidden in their folds.

He stood up, grabbing his dual dao swords from the wall they had been leading against and slung them across his back, just in case they came in necessary, then followed the airbender girl out the door, Azula leading the way with a smile as thin as his blades. Zuko had never been sure what she was thinking before, and certainly wasn’t able to now.

The crew they passed saluted them, but they were half hearted. Eyes tracked the girl in the middle, expressions of curiosity and suspicion warring across the former soldier’s faces. Zuko would not say that he trusted his crew; they, he knew, liked it better when he wasn’t around, and he had taken their turned backs as the best thing he would get. The least he could do was let them do their job. However, the absence of a personal connection left much to be desired, one of those things being the fact of how trustworthy they were, exactly.

Not that they knew the girl in front of Zuko was possibly the Avatar, but everyone in the Fire Nation had gone to history class and been forced to memorize the textbooks that displayed the defeat of the Air Nomads, depicting their clothing and appearances quite clearly.

The door to the deck slid open and Zuko was affronted by a cold breeze that only grew sharper as he graced the top of the steps and slid out onto the metal, which had begun to ice over due to the water that had rushed over the night before. The storm had cleared out the sky: it was a deep, azure blue above them, devoid of any clouds, the sun burning a bright and distant white.

Azula burned a walkable path across the deck as she walked, though the airbender skimmed so lightly and agily over it that Zuko doubted it had much of a benefit for her. She didn’t look concerned at all, especially when she vaulted over the side of the ship and landed in front of her awoken sky bison with a cry of joy and relief.

Zuko watched in odd fascination as the creature rolled over and licked her, which seemed to delight the airbender, who flung her arms across the animal as best as she could, barely wide enough to span the length of its nose.

In front of him, Azula stepped off the ship, and Zuko followed, tentatively testing the frozen earth beneath him. It held, though his foot sunk into the snow several inches deep. They weren’t dressed for the weather of the Poles, their clothing thin, but it was not as if Water Tribe clothes were something that could be easily purchased. Not when the Southern Water Tribe had been destroyed in every place it could be found, and the Northern Water Tribe had long since isolated itself and closed their borders.

 _Cowardly_ , Zuko thought, to hide from a war that would not end until the Northern Water Tribe had given itself up and fallen to the flame that swept across land and sea alike.

He shivered, crossing his arms against his chest and tried not to be bitter at the fact that Azula hardly looked perturbed at the cold.

“This is my sky bison,” the girl said, turning to watch them approach. “Her name is Moshi. And I’m Ty Lee.”

“That’s not very Air Nomadic,” Azula observed, her eyes narrowing into dark slits.

“You run out of names easily when you have seven daughters at the same time,” Ty Lee chirped, but the smile slid off her face as she looked around, seeming to finally realize where she was. “...Where are we?” she asked.

“Southern Pole,” Zuko said flatly. 

Ty Lee—it was really uncanny, to hear such a Fire Nation name belong to a girl who was as far from Fire Nation as one could be—blinked, her sunny smile wavering. “I suppose,” she said, in a near whisper. “That I traveled further than I thought.”

“A lot further, if Zuzu’s prediction is right,” Azula chimed in.

“Zuzu…?” Ty Lee questioned, and Zuko sighed, stepping forward and giving her a short bow.

“I’m Zuko,” he said. “And this is my younger sister, Azula.”

“Princess Azula,” his sister corrected. “And _Prince_ Zuko.”

Ty Lee’s eyes brightened, missing the small flinch Zuko gave at his sister’s usage of his burned away title. “Fire Nation royalty?” she asked, gasping, then frowned. “But...Fire Lord Sozin has no children.”

Zuko’s stomach plummeted to his knees. He swallowed against his dry throat. “Fire Lord Ozai rules now,” he managed to get out. “Fire Lord Sozin...died almost a century ago.”

Ty Lee laughed, as if she thought he was joking. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “I can’t have been gone _that_ long.”

Azula’s eyes narrowed. “And how long, exactly, do you think you were gone?”

Ty Lee thought about it. “Only a few days,” she decided. “I was flying on Moshi, but we got caught in a storm, and the last thing I remember is...is drowning.” Her expression shuttered, for a brief moment, and she looked down at her hands, turning them over to stare at the blue arrows.

“You were in an iceberg,” Zuko said. “When we found you.”

“Ah,” she said. “I...think I recall that.” She was still looking at her hands.

“And you’re an airbender,” Zuko continued, treading carefully over his words. “When the Air Nomads are all dead.”

Ty Lee’s hands fell to her side and Zuko froze, but when she looked up, the smile was still on her face. “What are you talking about?” she asked, and her voice was so sweet that it grated on his nerves.

“What Zuzu’s trying to say _nicely_ is that the genocide of the Air Nomads happened a century ago. None of them survived. Meaning you’ve been in your iceberg for a hundred years. Is it getting through to you yet?” 

Ty Lee turned her head to Azula uncertainly. “That’s…” she started, her words failing. “That’s a lie, isn’t it?” She sounded very small, and Zuko wished they had said it in a better way, but how did one sugarcoat the genocide of another one’s people?

Azula only smirked, so Ty Lee’s eyes traveled to Zuko. They were dark brown and glistening with unshed tears. Zuko shifted uncomfortably.

“If there are any airbenders left,” he finally said. “They would have to be very good at hiding.” He didn’t tell her about the skeletons he had burned when he was thirteen, or the ones he hadn’t been able to get through before Lieutenant Jee had come up to him and told him they were running low on rations. He didn’t tell her of the crumbling spires or the burn marks that scorched the beautiful mosaics that had sprawled across the tiled floors in colors so bright and lovely that they had nearly made Zuko cry when he had first laid his eyes on them.

Ty Lee slowly sank to her knees, one hand twisting into Moshi’s fur behind her. The sky bison gave a low bellow, kneeling behind her owner, and nudging Ty Lee with her nose. She stared blankly at the ground, her other hand digging into the snow, cold granulated crystals of it melting over her knuckles. 

“I…” she started, but the words stuttered out as quickly as an extinguished flame. “I—” She drew in a shaky breath, and Zuko waited with bated breath, sure that she was either going to dissolve into tears or attack them. 

Ty Lee did none of those. Instead she sat for several minutes, letting the silence stretch, and then she inhaled again and looked up. 

“I’m sure,” she said, a stubborn set to her mouth. “Not all of them are dead.”

Zuko’s heart sank lower. Azula laughed, a sharp peal that split the sky. “You can dream,” she said, and Zuko did not know if his sister meant to be so cruel, or if she thought she was being kind.

“My _people_ ,” Ty Lee said, her mouth trembling. “Would not just _die_ like that.” She rose to her feet, a staff in her hand that somehow had slipped Zuko’s notice before. It must have come from the saddle on Moshi’s back, he supposed, as that was the only logical source she could have procured it from.

“Air Nomads are disgusting pacifists,” Azula retorted. “They never were and never will be able to stand against the Fire Nation and survive.”

Privately, Zuko thought that it was kind of important that the one in front of them did, in fact, stand up to the Fire Nation and survive, but he did not want to get between his sister and her potential blue flames.

“My people are not pacifists,” Ty Lee said, sticking her chin out, hiding the wobble of her lip. “We live in harmony in nature, in coexistence with the people. Why do you think we’re the only people where every one of us is born a bender?” She was flushed, and Zuko didn’t think it was because of the biting cold. “Do _not_ disrespect my people like that, when the rest of the world are the barbarians.”

Zuko secretly agreed with that: the Fire Nation was razing the earth as they claimed it, the Earth Kingdom either lived in willful ignorance or poverty, much like the regular citizens of the Fire Nation, the Southern Water Tribe was nothing but ashes for trying to stop it, and the Northern Water Tribe had done the equivalent of turning its back on the world, and especially on its sister tribes in the South. 

“So you _do_ have a spine,” Azula said, her eyes sharp and calculating. She paused and seemed to think, which was never a good thing when it came to Zuko’s younger sister.

“Are you the Avatar?” 

Ty Lee gasped. “How did you know that?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper, and Zuko held back a laugh at the look on her face.

“Why do you think all the Air Nomads were murdered, _Ty Lee_ ?” Azula spat. “Great grandfather Sozin wanted to kill _you_.”

Ty Lee shrank back, then seemed to remember who she was. She straightened, tapping her staff into the snow. “And what if I _am_ the Avatar?” she asked, putting a valiant effort into hiding the tremble of her voice and hands. Zuko wasn’t sure if the tremble was because she was still shocked after hearing about the genocide of the Air Nomads, or because she had realized just how dangerous of a situation she was currently in.

“If you are the Avatar,” Azula said. “Then Zuzu here wants to take down our father with you.”

Zuko did not appreciate being thrown under the bus, as Ty Lee turned her attention back to him as if seeing him for the first time. She blinked, the unshed tears still shining in her eyes.

“I’m not ready to save the world,” she finally said, her voice so soft it would have gone unheard, if they weren’t on a sheet of ice where everything echoed and the air was so still it seemed to not exist at all, as if it was waiting for sound to break it apart. Zuko appreciated that, despite what looked to be her stubborn optimism in the face of everything, she had a good memory.

Azula rolled her eyes in his peripheral vision. “No one ever is,” she said, her tone mocking. Zuko knew his sister personally didn’t care about the outcome of the world, but she cared about the crown, which Zuko decidedly didn’t, and if they both got what they wanted, then what was the issue?

Ty Lee looked at her feet, twirling her staff. At first, the motion made Zuko reach for his blades, but he paused when he realized she wasn’t beginning to airbend or intending to strike, but rather shifting the staff around almost absentmindedly, as if it was an old habit to occupy her hands.

“I’m serious,” she finally said, in a small voice. “The day I ran away was the day they announced I was the Avatar.” She blinked, tears glistening on her cheeks where they had silently fallen. She drew in a shuddering breath. “And I...I didn’t _want_ to leave home, or even my annoying sisters. I wasn’t even that serious about airbending. All I wanted to do was-was live peacefully.” She sniffled. “I mean...I always wanted to be _different_ , to be _special_ , because who doesn’t when six other people have the exact same face as you? But being the Avatar...that was too special for me. So I ran away.” Her eyes were fixated on her feet, but Zuko could see the tears finally falling, splashing onto the ground and quickly joining the snow.

Azula sniffed. “So you only know airbending, big deal. The point of being the Avatar is that you have to learn the other three elements as well.” She sighed. “It’s a shame that the Fire Nation will probably kill you before that.”

Ty Lee looked at her in alarm. “Me?” she repeated, voice scratchy.

Azula nodded, her smile curving around her lips, the color of blood red. “Zuko here was banished and sent on a quest to capture the Avatar and gain father’s favor and his honor again.”

The airbender turned to Zuko, her eyes darkening, and suddenly she wasn’t absently spinning the staff anymore, but holding it out in front of her as if it really was a weapon. “Then what’s stopping you?” she asked. “Is this a ploy to trick me into trusting you?”

Zuko snorted. “At least you’re not as naive as you look,” he admitted grudgingly. “Did you miss the whole part where Azula told you that I wanted to take down our father?”

“Your father...the Fire Lord,” Ty Lee stated, haltingly. She frowned, her brow furrowing. “You want to kill your father?”

“Wouldn’t that be a dream,” Azula muttered, off to the side.

“The world has been at war for a century,” Zuko said. “It started with the massacre of the Air Nomads, but it didn’t stop there, even if the Avatar disappeared. Do you see that hill over there? The Southern Water Tribe used to be there, but now it’s nothing but ruins. They’ve been slaughtered too. The Earth Kingdom is being razed to the ground, and it’s only gotten worse since my father took the throne six years ago. He doesn’t want power; he wants world domination, even if he has to burn it to the ground to get it. Children are being sent to war and dying there. People are starving. Famine has been sweeping the land for the past three years. The war needs to end _before_ my father breaks down Ba Sing Se’s wall for good, because if that happens, then there’s nothing left, and the world _will_ burn.”

Ty Lee was frozen. Zuko wasn’t sure what life had been like a hundred years ago, but he was sure it had been a lot more fun and games than the current state of things.

“So…” she said, taking in a deep, meditative breath and closing her eyes. “You want to kill the Fire Lord, who happens to be your father, and end the war. You need me to help you do that, since I am the Avatar and all that. And to help you do that, I need to learn the other three elements.” She opened her eyes; they flashed silver for a brief moment, disorienting Zuko. “Is that right?”

“She catches on fast,” Azula said, voice filled with satisfaction.

“But who...who can I even learn from?” Ty Lee asked, her voice cracking. “Doesn’t the Fire Nation want me dead? Who’s to say they won’t be after us?” She looked at their red and gold clothes.

“We likely won’t be able to keep it a secret for long,” Zuko admitted. “But we can try. Plus, you’ll have us on your side.”

Ty Lee’s gaze slid to his swords. “And what does that mean?” she asked, cautiously shifting feet into a less defensive state.

Azula promptly lit her arm on fire, blue flame streaking up it. Ty Lee gasped, but stopped when she realized that, while Azula’s arm was on fire, her clothes weren’t burning. “You’re a firebender!” she exclaimed, leaning in closer. “But I’ve never seen blue flames before. How did that happen?”

Azula shrugged, but Zuko saw a smile tug at her lips at the pure awe on Ty Lee’s face. “Sheer power of will,” she answered. “My flames are hotter than even my father’s.”

His sister would have been the perfect heir, Zuko supposed. He had always been a failure, but his sister had been better, had ended up burning all her firebending masters permanently so that they could suffer the humiliation of losing to a ten year old. Had sat in while their father had tortured people and later rubbed it in Zuko’s face. She was a brutal machine oiled and shined for war, a tank that ran over people without a care for who they were.

When Zuko thought about how his sister had been raised and how she had been shaped for too long, it made him want to throw up. She was his baby sister, and she might have been born already cold and cruel, but their father had been doing his damn best to transform her into a monster fitting of being crowned, and Zuko _hated_ it. He was infinitely glad that Azula had joined him, even if it had been under the guise of ‘defeating people from around the world’. Zuko might not know her true intentions, though he had a suspicion, but he knew that even a year away from their father would do her good. 

For him it had been three, and the effects still lingered, clinging to his soul and refusing to leave. They burned him all over again when Lieutenant Jee let some of his frustration show, or one of the crew yelled sharply, or when someone appeared on his left side. It waited there, waiting for someone to show him that, yes, pain and violence was his birthright and punishment and suffering were mantras he should live by. Everytime that failed to happen, his chains only clenched tighter in a sick game of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Someone’s coming,” Ty Lee said, suddenly. She pointed, and Zuko spun lightly on his feet, already prepared to draw his swords and attack whoever it was, but she had seen a ship, not a person. It was a Fire Nation warship, cresting around the edge of a wall of ice, too far away to see them, but getting closer every minute.

Zuko cursed, releasing his swords. “It’s Zhao,” he said, and Azula let out a short sigh. When he looked at her, he saw her holding blue flame daggers in her hands, stance shifting. He wanted to say they shouldn’t act confrontational, but the only way to force Zhao to move on was to beat him. 

Zuko was glad, for once, that he had a sister on his side.

He turned to Ty Lee. “Take your sky bison and hide behind the hill,” he ordered. “If Zhao sees you, it’s likely all three of us will be dead.”

“Why?” Ty Lee asked, already opening her staff. It was a glider, Zuko realized, a light blue one that would easily blend into the sky. 

“Zhao’s been searching for his glory for years,” Zuko explained. “And he thinks he can find it by antagonizing me and shoving in my face how I still haven’t the Avatar. If he catches wind that I’ve been successful, he’ll try to take you for himself. You don’t want that, Ty Lee.” She opened his mouth, but the look in his eyes must have told her something, because she only gave a sharp nod and nudged Moshi, then slid into the air as easily as taking a step up.

Zuko watched her fly away on her glider, keeping low to the ground. Azula melted the snow around Moshi’s track, concealing them. Ty Lee dipped below the hill and disappeared. It was as if the Avatar had never been there in the first place.

“I could use a good fight,” Azula said, her eyes gleaming with the excitement that came from hurting others. “Are you ready, Zuzu?”

Zuko touched his dual dao swords one more time, a reassurance that he could defend himself, one he had been doing for years. “I’m ready,” he replied, grimly.

They turned to face the warship.

* * *

Captain Zhao was a man the age of Zuko’s father, and acted in a way that only served to remind Zuko further of Ozai. He walked and talked with a brash arrogance that Zuko has gotten rid of from his own body after he had pleaded his father for mercy and was met with a flaming lesson instead. Zuko found him to be a sad excuse for a man, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that Zhao knew the best way to get under someone’s skin, and he had been practicing getting under Zuko’s for three years now.

They met on the deck of the Wani, Ty Lee and her sky bison successfully out of sight, if the lack of words about the Avatar from Zhao’s mouth were anything to go by. If he’d known they’d found the Avatar, and that she was only a hill away, he would have been sure to attack them.

“I’m commandeering your ship and conscripting your crew,” was what Zhao started with. 

Zuko laughed before he could stop himself at the sheer audacity. “On what premise?” he asked.

Zhao looked at him stiffly, an ugly sneer stretched across his lips. “My own,” he hissed. “The Fire Lord has graciously appointed me an Admiral, and gifted me with the task of laying siege to the Northern Water Tribe.”

Zuko lost his breath, only for a moment. Then he swallowed and forced himself not to choke when he inhaled again. “The Northern Water Tribe?” he echoed, as indifferently as possible.

“Fire Lord Ozai grows tired of waiting for them to surrender.” Zhao’s smile curled around his lips uglily—Zuko did not have to guess who had been whispering in his father’s ears. It would have been easy, the plant the thought of destruction in the path of a fire that longed to devour more so that it could grow, grow until it was larger than life.

“They’re a neutral party,” Zuko responded.

“Not for much longer,” Zhao said, wearing a savage imitation of his father’s smile. Zuko didn’t have the heart to tell him that he paled in every way to the power of the Fire Lord. No one could incite the same fury and fear as Ozai did, least of all Zhao.

“Do you have official orders?” Azula asked, stepping up to stand next to her brother, her arms crossed. The fire had been extinguished, but the threat of it still danced across her eyes and knuckles.

Zhao smirked, but did not say anything, which was telling.

“Then you have no right,” Zuko said, folding his hands into tight fists to prevent them from reaching treacherously for his dual dao swords. He wasn’t scared of Zhao; he couldn’t be. 

The man was silent for a long, hard moment. Then the amicable smile he had been playing out fell away to reveal his usual sneer. “And who’s going to stop me?” he asked. “I’m sure the Fire Lord will be happy to hear that his son is actively hindering the war effort.” Zuko heard the undertone: if it was said like that, _actively hindering_ quickly turned into _outright treason._

Azula tensed next to him. Zuko was sure it went unnoticed to Zhao, but he had lived in a psychotic family for years, and he was well learned to notice the subtlest changes in mood and stance, ones that would prepare him to duck the moment before a blow fell.

“Then you plan to leave us stranded in a wasteland of ice, _Admiral_?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. 

Zhao’s smirk widened. Zuko thought that he didn’t know Zuko’s sister very well if he had missed the tight fury in her voice. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “You two would be dropped off at the nearest port.” 

The nearest port would be in Fire Nation waters, at a Fire Nation occupied island. A place where Zuko was sure to be arrested, bound, and dragged back to his father’s feet for breaking the rules of his banishment. 

He glanced back at the rest of the crew, who were going about fixing parts of the ship that needed repairs, but could take time to fix, time that they now had. They were actively trying to look like they _weren’t_ listening in, but Zuko knew their conversation had to be ringing across the deck, especially as Zhao was anything but subtle.

“You’re not taking my crew,” Zuko said, as stiffly and respectfully as possible. “My crew has been discharged from the military for years now. They’re no longer soldiers.”

“The Fire Lord has decreed that all discharged soldiers can be recalled into war if there is a need,” Zhao responded. “Decree 1567 of Fire Lord Ozai’s rule under the light of Agni.” Zuko stole a look at his sister; she wasn’t denying it, which meant it was true. He wished she could have mentioned it earlier, but Azula never did anything under obligation, ever.

When Zuko didn’t say anything, Zhao’s eyes narrowed and he said, “I’m taking your crew, Prince Zuko.”

“No,” Zuko said, the word slipping from his lips. “It’s my crew, and it’s my ship. If you really want to take them, you’ll have to go through me first.”

There was a cough. The engineer slipped away belowdecks, no doubt bringing news of what was occurring to the crew crouched by the entrance to the door. Zuko’s palms were sweaty. He wasn’t sure why he had done that. It wasn’t like he had a personal attachment to the crew, or even to the decrepit Wani, but it had still been his floating home for the last three years, and he knew that sending his crew along with Zhao was just as good as sentencing them to death.

“You’ve offended me,” Zhao said. “I challenge you to an Agni Kai.”

Zuko lost his breath. He knew it was a ploy to undermine him, knew Zhao had said it because he knew exactly how to get under Zuko’s skin, knew that one or another, Zhao _would_ be leaving here with Zuko’s crew and Zuko’s ship. 

Knew that Zuko couldn’t let him do that, not only because of his pride, but because it felt _wrong_.

“Anyone who wants to challenge Zuzu has to go through me first,” Azula said, sighing heavily, as if she hadn’t wanted to do this.

Surprisingly, Zhao didn’t have a sense of self preservation, or maybe he thought it would be more beneficial for him to give Ozai’s favored child a humiliating defeat. It was also highly unlikely, Zuko realized, that Zhao knew just how much of a talent Azula possessed. He had been at sea for many years; he would not have seen how hot Azula’s flames grew in the time he was gone. 

It was likely that Admiral Zhao thought the skill of Ozai’s daughter was nothing more than a rumor. 

“As long as Prince Zuko has no objections,” Zhao said snidely, cutting a glance at Zuko, as if he expected Zuko to take insult at his sister stepping in.

Zuko swallowed his pride like he had done countless times since his father had taken it away in a flare of molten flame, and stepped back. “If my sister wishes,” he said, against a dry throat. Azula spared him a glance, her lips twisted into her usual cruel smirk.

Since Azula was a girl—a woman, Zuko was sure his sister would argue if she ever caught someone referring to her as such—they forwent the usual rituals, only snapping bands of gold over their biceps as their breath frosted in the cold air. The distantly bright sun was starting to dip, wavering over the horizon line, and Zuko could tell from the twitch of Azula’s fingers that she had felt it: fire came from the sun, came from Agni, and he was sure she could feel it trailing away slowly, receding with the sunlit rays. 

They bowed to one another. Turned their backs and took three paces away. Knelt. The crew had come up from belowdecks, filtering out slowly, all two dozen or so of them. Lieutenant Jee approached Zuko, bowed low, and said, “Your Highness?”

“My sister will battle Admiral Zhao in an Agni Kai,” Zuko said stiffly.

Lieutenant Jee’s voice dropped lower. “For the…” He didn’t say, _the airbender, the girl, the_ Avatar, but his eyes drifted towards the snow banks anyways.

Zuko hissed sharply between his teeth. “For this ship,” he spat back, catching himself before his voice rose. Lieutenant Jee said nothing to that; he stepped back with a short bow and joined the rest of the crew opposite the rails where the Agni Kai would take place, where they would be safe from any wayward balls of fire.

Zuko flexed his fingers nervously over the hilts of his dual dao and exhaled, trying to calm his stammering heart. Azula would be fine: Zuko knew this, just as he knew Zhao would soon regret ever underestimating a girl, for ever thinking both of Ozai’s children had turned out as weak and cowardly as Zuko had.

Agni dipped beneath the horizon line. Azula and Zhao turned in unison to face each other, on their knees, and the Agni Kai began. 

Azula struck first, a whorl of blue leaving her feet as she sprung back on her hands and flipped herself into a standing position. There was no mistaking that it was she who left the first mark, spat the first sparks; his sister left no room for doubt; she was as fast as a viper, striking with its poisonous fangs.

Zhao was startled by this, Zuko could tell, but it only hardened the lines of age on his face. His fire flared to life, a sickly orange, and then they were fighting. Zuko held his breath and watched—he wasn’t afraid of fire, even if it had taken him years of flinching away when one of the few firebenders on the crew casually lit one even remotely close to his face, and he knew Azula could take care of herself, but his heart still clenched in worry as he watched her small, lithe form against Zhao’s brute force.

In the end, it was hardly a match. Zhao fought hard, but Azula was relentless in a calm and collected way few had been able to achieve. She never tired. She never ran out of flame, even as Agni sunk lower and lower. Zhao kicked at her, hit her in the ribs, but she didn’t even flinch, instead slamming fire into his gut and sending him sprawling.

The Agni Kai ended with Zhao lying flat on his back, breathing heavily, Azula standing triumphant over him, except she didn’t look pleased; only a cool, cold smile tugged at her lips, as if he wasn’t even worth her pleasure. She hadn’t broken a sweat; Agni Kai’s were simply warm ups to someone of her prowess and mastery.

Lightning crackled on the deck between them as Azula drew the last few sparks into her fingers as if it was something akin to drinking water. The lightning disappeared; the sun slipped beneath the horizon line, the rays in the sky fading away into the cool gray dusk. The air was cold, the only heat available what was still radiating out from his sister.

“You will take your ship,” she said, calmly. “And leave the Southern Pole tonight. You will not bother or attempt to co-opt the Wani ever again.” Her eyes flared. “That’s an order from your _Princess_.”

Zhao opened his mouth, anger taut in his eyes. Zuko was sure he longed to scream at her, but Azula was not banished or exiled like her brother. She was here, on her own free will, and she still carried all the superiority, honor, and power she had in Caldera here. 

“You’re not saying anything, Admiral,” his sister remarked, the last of the lightning filtering away. The blue illuminated her face in a flash, the edges carved out of fire itself. 

“Of course, Princess Azula,” Zhao blustered, lowering his head. He was still laying on the deck, though he must be freezing. Or, on second thought, maybe not; Zuko was sure it was common for firebenders to regulate their body temperatures. His mind jumped fleetingly to Ty Lee; he recalled a tome on airbending he had read, stating that airbenders could do the same. He hoped it was true, and that the Avatar wasn’t slowly freezing herself and her sky bison alive again somewhere over the ridge.

Azula turned on her heel, a laugh on her lips, and Zhao moved, a flame dagger in his hand aimed for the back of her neck. 

Zuko reacted, his hands that had already been resting on his blades pulling them out and swirling in an arc. One redirected the dagger, dissolving it with a clash of metal, and the other clanged down onto Zhao’s wristguard, the only thing really preventing it from cutting off his hand Zuko’s precise control over the most minimal movements. His dao swords were an extension of his body, of his breathing, of his arm; Zuko had grown up with them as much as Azula had with her firebending. It was an art; it was a skill.

And now he had nearly cut off the Admiral’s hand. 

For a moment, they both stared at the blade, Azula turning around slowly, a strange look in her eyes. Zuko wasn’t sure if she was upset that Zhao had tried such a backhanded thing, or upset that Zuko hadn’t trusted her to take care of it herself.

“Just because I have no honor, doesn’t mean you can sacrifice yours, especially when it comes to my sister,” Zuko said, his words a slow growl. He sheathed the dual dao blades slowly and deliberately, his eyes never leaving Zhao’s. The Admiral looked a bit shaky, the neat cut through his wrist guard smoking from the clean force Zuko had used, blood bubbling from the thin slash. 

“Now _get off my ship_ ,” Zuko said, anger cutting into the words, and Zhao’s face contorted into fury. Zuko was sure he was going to attack them—and a part of Zuko was _ready_ for it, filled with a strange and savage delight at the thought of finally battling someone, because of how alive it would make him feel. 

Zhao let his fist fall, the wristguard slipping off. One of his soldier’s scurried up behind him, picking it up and taking the gold bands. Zhao nearly slapped him away. “Come on,” he growled, to the low form bent in a perpetual bow behind him. “We have the savages and their spirits to destroy.”

Zuko watched him go, the words sinking in slowly. “Spirits?” he said, aloud, and Azula gave a short laugh.

“He’s a moron,” she said, slowly. “If he thinks he can destroy the waterbenders _treasured moon spirits_ , or whatever.”

Zhao was a moron, but Zuko was sure that he was completely serious about destroying the Northern Water Tribe’s spirits. How that would be possible, Zuko had no idea, but Zhao also being able to seamlessly cut off Zuko at every route, even when they weren’t remotely near one another, should have been impossible too, and he had done it anyway.

They watched Zhao’s ship turn tail and retreat, disappearing from view, but waited until even the smoke was gone to traipse back across the ice to where Ty Lee was. When Zuko reached the climax of the hill, he looked down to see the ground scattered with snow angels, Ty Lee leaning against Moshi with her eyes fixated on the rapidly darkening sky.

Azula blew out a stream of fire, lighting up the ground and alerting the spaced out airbender to their presence. She jumped to her feet immediately, gliding up on a sweet of air. Behind her, the sky bison lumbered to her feet. 

“What happened?” she asked, her eyes wide. They dimly reflected the moon that rose behind the siblings, making it look like her orbs were glowing silver once again, except this time the pale light only encompassed a fraction of her pupils.

“Zhao,” Azula said, looking and sounding very bored. “An insufferable man.” She glanced at Ty Lee’s worried face. “Don’t worry, I didn’t murder him or anything, though I wish I could.” She snorted.

Zuko sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a breath. The snow was seeping through his clothes and into his bones. He couldn’t hold back a body wide shiver, though he regretted it—even in her thin, summer style clothing, Ty Lee didn’t look cold at all.

His sister shifted, and a moment later Zuko was surprised to feel heat radiating faintly across his body from her distance to him. He didn’t risk moving closer, sure that she would move away if she noticed. He couldn’t even tell if the shift was intentional at first; it was always hardest to tell, with Azula.

“Zhao plans to attack the Northern Water Tribe and officially conquer them under order from the Fire Lord,” Zuko started. 

“Do I...do I have to stop him?” Ty Lee asked nervously. Her grip on her staff was tight, one of her fingers tapping anxiously across it. 

Zuko exhaled. “The Southern Water Tribe is dead,” he said. “Therefore, the only bet you have at finding a waterbender to teach you is the Northern Water Tribe. _Therefore_ , our best bet is to beat Zhao to the Northern Pole and find you a teacher _before_ he blows it to pieces.”

Saving the Northern Water Tribe wasn’t on Zuko’s to do list. One act of treason was enough; two was a death sentence twice over. He was sure his sister would be with him, even if he didn’t like it. They couldn’t save everyone in the process of saving the world, right? It was too soon.

Ty Lee let out a breath, the wind gusting over them with a little bit of airbending whumph in it. She stared at her staff, drawing in several long meditative airbending breathes. Zuko watched her chest rise and fall curiously, noting the balance and control she had. He had thought she was still slightly volatile, if her bouncy nature and passive bending was anything to go by, but he was beginning to form an understanding that, even if Ty Lee wasn’t amazingly talented at airbending, or even carrying a beginner’s knowledge of the other three elements, she was still the Avatar, and that meant bending was as natural to her as breathing.

She opened her eyes, the air around her stilling. “Alright,” she said, softly, lifting her chin as if she had accepted the burden as easily as that. “I’ll start with waterbending, then. That sounds like a good plan.”

Azula laughed. “You’re not _starting_ with waterbending,” she interjected.

Ty Lee looked at her in confusion. “But we’re going to the Northern Water Tribe,” she stated.

Azula’s hand illuminated the darkness around them as the blue fire flared to light. Ty Lee startled back, the moon in her eyes overtaken by the electric color of Azula’s inner flame. “Did you forget I’m a firebender?” she asked. “You’re learning fire first, Agni help me.” _And Tui and La be damned,_ Zuko heard, but Azula was smart enough to not utter that aloud when they were feet from the ruins of a La blessed tribe.

Ty Lee was still focused on the flame, and Zuko wondered if she was remembering what they had told her, of how the Fire Nation and firebenders had destroyed her temples and her people.

“Let’s do it,” she said, and her voice was firm, determination set in her jaw, her mouth, her eyes, her hands.

Zuko nodded, once, in affirmation, and she floated to her feet with a sweep of her staff—her glider, Zuko reminded himself. 

“We should start tonight, then,” the airbender said. “I don’t know exactly how much the world has changed in-in a, a century, but I do know that traveling to the other side of the world takes time.” She patted her sky bison, which had finally trundled up behind her. “Moshi can take us. She’s a renowned distance flier.”

Zuko eyed the sky bison, Azula doing the same. It wasn’t ideal, especially considering the fact he had grown used to traveling by sea, due to the fact that he had been doing so for three years. He was sure it wouldn’t be too different. The rocking of the waves could equate to the rocking of an animal soaring through turbulence, couldn’t it?

Azula sighed. “If there's no better option than riding that filthy beast,” she said.

“Moshi is _beautiful_ ,” Ty Lee said, and Zuko was reminded that, even if she had been frozen in an iceberg for a century, Ty Lee was still mentally fifteen years old. 

He wasn’t looking forward to this. Hopefully treason would be worth it.

* * *

They departed in the morning, when Agni had just started to grace the sky with his light. Zuko stood on the deck in front of Lieutenant Jee, fiddling with the strap of his dao swords, the older man’s arms crossed and a frown on his face.

“From this moment on,” Zuko said. “I hereby free you from your contract to the Wani. The Wani is yours, and you and your crew are free to do and travel as you please.” He coughed, feeling awkwardness rise in his throat. 

“Where are you going, Your Highness?” Jee asked, looking remarkably clear eyed as he took in the sky bison and the girl floating around it on the deck behind him. It was not a secret, and Zuko had never intended to keep one from his crew.

“It’s best if you don’t know,” he said, finally. “I won’t ask you to keep any...secrets...from my father, Lieutenant.” He drew in a deep breath, aware that, in a few days, his death sentence was surely to be signed, and a bounty would be posted on his head, _wanted dead or alive._

“Prince Zuko,” Lieutenant Jee said to him. “That girl is the Avatar.”

Zuko looked at him, then nodded. Only once. There was no point denying it if Jee had already made the connection, and there was not many connections one could make. Besides, he respected the Lieutenant enough, though he still wondered why Jee had asked. If Zuko was like his father, or even his sister, he would have drawn his swords and slain the Lieutenant where he stood.

“I won’t stop you,” Jee said, stepping back, his hands folded professionally in front of him as he lowered into a ninety degree bow. “May Agni guide you.”

Zuko coughed, his throat hoarse. “And you,” he whispered roughly, bowing back, much lower than a member of the royal family should to a mere naval officer.

Zuko turned and retreated to the sky bison, accepting a hand up from an airbending Ty Lee. He settled into the saddle, his sister already leaning back and concentrating on her bending, as if it was a normal morning.

Ty Lee floated to the front of the bison, taking the reins. “Yip yip!” she cried, and Zuko gripped the edge of the saddle as Moshi gave a flick of her tail and ascended. He leaned over the side, tentatively, and watched the Wani become nothing as they hit the cloud cover.

Then the Wani was gone, as were all hopes Zuko ever had of regaining his place as his father’s heir and honor, thrown away in favor of a century old dream and a flickering hope of a world where fire did not burn it to the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few characterization notes:
> 
> In this, Zuko's basically the grumpy older brother. He's at the point where he's realized his father is wrong (think Day of the Black Sun), but also still yearns for validation and is sufficiently traumatized. Being a nonbender has changed a few things as well, which we'll see as the story progresses. Azula, on the other hand, is basically a sociopath, but her year on the boat with Zuko has begun to teach her more human emotions, such as empathy, and loosened her father's hold on her. In this au, she's fiercely loyal to Zuko and basically no one else.
> 
> Ty Lee's personality is closest to Aang's, which is why I chose her to be the Avatar in this au, but when writing her character I want to highlight the fact that, while she's still bubbly and optimistic, part of that is a facade. She's also more mature (Ty Lee and Azula are fifteen, Zuko sixteen (and Yue will be sixteen in the future, with Mai being seventeen), so her reactions will be different to certain things.
> 
> My hope is to update once a week, but we'll see how fast I write. I'm on tumblr @astarlightmonbebe ( asks are open - i post whatever, i also edit a lil! ), if you want to hmu
> 
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	2. 二

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for everyone who gave me such kind feedback on the first chapter! I'm glad to see it wasn't terrible :,,)
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include references to child abuse (light), mentions of violence, depictions of skeletons (Southern Air Temple time so...ya)

Zuko slept restlessly, awaking with the remains of a scream on his lips, silenced by clamping a hand over his mouth. He was sweating, a cold sweat that stuck his clothes to his back and dried in his hair. His body was still shaking with tremors from the tension that had filled it from his dream; he moved, slightly, and winced as his muscles stretched out. 

Above him, the early morning was starting to gray, the color lightening from the dark midnight blue to a softer palette as Agni prepared to creep to the surface of the horizon. Zuko sat up, opening his hands and seeing bloody imprints on his palms. He would have to cut his nails; they were getting too harmful again.

Azula was asleep. Her body was curled up, and Zuko was struck by how small she looked, his sister. She was built tiny, tiny but strong, and though her confidence and pride added a foot to her in confrontations, asleep his sister looked like the child she was. Zuko tucked the blanket closer around her shoulders, aware of how cold it was up in the clouds, even if she didn’t feel it herself.

Ty Lee was still sitting ramrod straight on top of the sky bison’s head, looking straight ahead, her hands open and relaxed, the reins lying across them casually. Zuko shifted, and she turned, some light in her eyes dimming. He couldn’t tell if it was real, or if he had imagined it.

“Sorry,” Zuko said, his voice still hoarse. He coughed and cleared it as quietly as possible. Azula was not a light sleeper by any means, but they shared an uncanny hearing that made sleeping difficult, even without Zuko’s share of nightmares, terrors, and flame filled fever dreams and fears. “Were you meditating?”

She nodded. “I needed some time to think. I-I don’t feel like it’s been a century,” she said. “I feel exactly the same. I was riding Moshi just yesterday. I saw my sisters two days ago. I—,” she stopped, bit her lip, and sighed, brow pinching. 

“It’s not a dream,” Zuko said, somberly.

“How did you know that was what I was thinking?” Ty Lee asked, laughing lightly.

“I could read it in your face,” Zuko replied, scooting closer to her. He touched Moshi, briefly, and admired how soft the fur was. 

“You’re not asking if I’m okay?” Ty Lee asked tentatively.

Zuko rolled his eyes. “I don’t care if you’re okay or not, because it’s likely that none of us are or will be at the end of this.” He paused. “Do you know where we’re going?”

“The Southern Air Temple,” she said. “It’s close by, and I...I need to see for myself.” Her eyes were firm. “I don’t believe that my people—that the Air Nomads are all dead. They must be hiding  _ somewhere. _ ” She drew in a deep breath. “Maybe they’re waiting for me.”

Zuko was silent. He didn’t want to crush her fragile, fluttering, butterfly like hope. It reminded him too much of his childlike self, the one who thought it would be better next time, the one that thought he was just a late bloomer, the one that thought finding the Avatar was plausible and possible.

He wished that someone had told him, before he had walked into that war room, to keep his mouth shut. He wished he had learned that his father was a terrible person, that the Fire Nation was responsible for so much horror and unjustified bloodshed, before he had to wake up with half his face burned off, a lesson imprinted upon his skin like a father’s last caring caress.

But, Agni, hope had been such a sweet,  _ sweet  _ thing.

And Zuko still longed for his father to touch him gently, like his mother had.

So much for that, now.

“One hundred years is a long time,” he said, as carefully as possible.

“But I’m not different,” Ty Lee said. Zuko wasn’t sure if she sounded petulant or just young.

“You were frozen in an iceberg. That’s basically the same thing as being frozen in time. Your Avatar State likely protected you from aging or drying, it’s the only explanation,” Zuko said.

“You sure know a lot about this Avatar stuff,” Ty Lee said, giving him a suspicious look.

“I like reading,” Zuko said. “And when I was assigned to find you, I foolishly thought reading would somehow make me the first successful person to do so in a century.”

Ty Lee looked a bit disconcerted to be reminded that Zuko was technically supposed to be bringing her back to the Fire Nation in chains.

“You trusted us too easily,” Zuko finally said.

She shrugged. A wind picked up the ends of her hair. “You didn’t hurt me. You seem like you want to help me.” It was a low standard to have, but Zuko’s standard was lower and built in the lines of ‘this person won’t hit me that hard if I make a mistake,’ so he couldn’t argue with her.

“In the future,” he advised her. “Don’t trust people so easily.” She opened her mouth, but he cut her off quickly enough. “I don’t know how things were a hundred years ago, and I don’t know much about Air Nomad culture, but war changes things. The people you meet are living in a world of violence, and violence breeds violence. Maybe people will love you, but it’s more likely that they’ll try to rob you or collect whatever bounty will be posted on our heads.”

“You’re not a people person, are you?” Ty Lee asked with a small laugh.

“I’ve lived on the sea for three years with a bunch of adults,” Zuko told her, folding his arms. His palms stung. He hoped the cuts healed quickly, so they wouldn’t be a hindrance to using his swords. “This is what I wish I would have known much earlier.”

“Three years?” Ty Lee asked. “How old are you now?”

“Sixteen,” Zuko said. “Azula is fifteen.”

The airbender’s eyes brightened. “I’m fifteen too!” she exclaimed. Her eyes gleamed with newfound excitement. “We could be friends,” she said, shyly. “You must not have had any real friends on your ship.”

Zuko ignored that in favor of saying, “I had my sister for the last year.” He paused. “...Didn’t you have friends?”

Ty Lee sighed. “If I did have friends, they were also all my sister’s friends. We were considered interchangeable.” She sighed again. “When I see them again—”

“They’re dead,” Zuko interrupted. Ty Lee froze. “You’re not going to see your sisters again,” Zuko continued, wishing he could take back the words, but they were already said. “Even if they did, by some miracle, survive the original genocide, they would be dead by now.”  _ The world was never kind to airbenders,  _ he did not say. 

The Avatar shifted, her eyes flinty. “Do you think I have time for that?” she asked, so quietly that the wind nearly caught her words. “If I admit to myself that my whole family and everyone I love is dead, was  _ murdered,  _ like you said, do you think I would be able to function?” Her words were scarily flat, her face void. Zuko wondered briefly if she had been possessed by a spirit.

She laughed; it was a small and somewhat broken thing. “So I’m going to hope, because that’s all I have left. I know people think my optimism is...dumb and naive, but it’s always been the only thing I’ve ever had.” Then she was smiling again, the smile stretching wide across her face, and it was almost more terrifying than any display of airbending could have been.

Color was starting to be breathed to life across the clouds, as if Agni himself was letting his rays push back the gray. Zuko tipped his head up and let the words dissipate slowly from the air between them, concentrating on the colors and steadying his breathing, cleansing his mind in preparation for the day. If they were visiting an Air Temple, he wanted to be ready for it.

They flew in silence, Ty Lee occasionally murmuring words of encouragement to her sky bison, lovingly patting her on the head. Zuko had always liked animals, liked feeding the turtle ducks in the pond and the koi fish, and petting the animals at the market. He had liked animals, even with his sister intent on destroying any pet he tried to keep longer than a day.

Zuko leaned back and watched the sky and thought, idly, of the possibilities that stretched in front of them. The Northern Water Tribe would take a few weeks, maybe two, depending on how quickly Moshi flew and how straight of a line they travelled in. He had seen the ice walls from a distance on the Wani, early on in his banishment, but the waves had pushed him back whenever he had tried to get closer. Waterbenders, keeping the lines of their seclusion in place.

It was sad, how great the Northern Water Tribe stood, when its counterparts in the South had been melted into the ground, tribe after tribe, until the last of them had been forced to sparse boats. He wondered how many of them lived now; Water Tribe ships were decreed to be destroyed on sight if a Fire Nation ship came across them. 

And if Zhao got his way...then the waterbenders would be gone, just like the airbenders. The thought made Zuko sick to his stomach. He wasn’t a bender, even if he had always longed to be, but he knew bending required balance. The  _ world  _ required balance.

He wondered what a world filled with only fire would look like. He was scared that soon, he wouldn’t have to wonder anymore, because it would already be there. A world on fire, and Zuko would burn with the rest of them.

“Look!” Ty Lee cried, leaning dangerously forward on the top of her sky bison’s head, pointing forward. Zuko turned and saw the slope of a mountain rising from the early morning mist, jutting out in a mix of gray and green. And, on the mountain, masts of stone curled upwards, a small village sloping up the mountainside and convening on a spire that rose high above the rest of it, the top of it tinted rosy gold from the peeking sunlight.

Zuko could feel his breath catch in his throat at the sight of it. He had visited the Southern Air Temple once, two years ago, but he hadn’t had much time to admire the scenery then, too hellbent on ripping it apart to discover wherever the Avatar could be hiding. Now, he took it in: the soft colors of ivory and peach, hardened and weathered by years, but still glowing beneath the grime. The buildings were small, but each formed intricately, twisting around the mountain in such a precarious way that it looked like it should not be possible, but Zuko supposed for the Air Nomads, it had been an easily navigable structure.

Azula stirred behind him, rising and stretching efficiently. Her eyes sharpened as she took in the structure. “An Air Temple?” she questioned. “Really?”

“Ty Lee’s choice,” Zuko said with a shrug. “You’ve never been to one, have you?”

Azula was quiet. When he looked back at his sister, she was eyeing the incoming Air Temple with a mix of apprehension and...something else. Awe? Curiosity? Zuko couldn’t tell, but he didn’t think it was a bad thing. In fact, it was something new he was unused to seeing on his sister’s face.

“Lala?” Zuko asked, when she still didn’t reply.

She turned to face him, languidly letting her hair fall over her shoulders, the gold piece and red ribbon lying in her lap. “No, I haven’t been here before,” she said, hands working through her hair quickly, even without a brush or comb. “The textbooks overdid it.” Zuko watched her pull her hair into a bun, leaving two strands to frame her face, slotting the gold hairpin through it, tying it with the ribbon. She styled her hair like their mother had. Zuko wondered if she realized it. He knew that if he brought it up, she would stop.

They coasted closer and closer to the Air Temple, so close that Zuko was sure he could reach out his hand and have his fingers brush the limestone and marble that made it up. Ty Lee let Moshi land naturally in a courtyard, looking around bright eyed and excited. 

Her smile faded, just a little bit. “It’s...dirty,” she said, looking around despairingly. 

Azula snorted. “Who would have cleaned it, do you think?” 

Zuko glared at her, but she turned her head away. He looked back at Ty Lee—to her, she had been here only days before, had probably landed right in this courtyard, except then it had been filled with Air Nomads with tattoos and clothing identical to hers, sky bison milling about, probably the smell of food in the air, gliders floating through the sky in bright darts of color. 

It must have been  _ alive  _ back then. But it was not Ty Lee’s back then, it was her yesterday, her last week, was going to be her tomorrow. Zuko couldn’t wrap his head around it; he wondered how she was doing it, how she was coping with it. 

_ “I won’t believe it until I see it,”  _ she had said yesterday. Zuko wasn’t sure he wanted to know what would happen when she did see it, when she had to believe it and confront the awful truth. He couldn’t imagine it would be anything good.

“It’s empty,” Ty Lee said sadly, sliding off her sky bison. She drew her staff across the floor, frowning. “...There’s burn marks…” Zuko glances down, seeing the line she had traced was, in fact, one of scorched stone.

“What do you think firebenders leave?” Now, Zuko went to elbow his sister, but she dodged with a frown at him. Ty Lee, thankfully, appeared to be lost in her mind, wandering across the ground a little ways away, the frown still on her face. She looked lost, trailing her fingers across the columns, tracing burn marks and dusting off the tiles beneath them with the occasional gust of air.

“Where did they all go?” she asked, her voice very small. Zuko followed her from a ways away, his stomach sinking lower with every step. He could remember walking this path earlier, when he was thirteen, and the skeletons that had littered it, leaning haphazardly against walls, strewn against one another without an ounce of respect. The Fire Nation had come and left just as quickly, leaving the bodies to the wind and rot. He had burned as many as he could, but the rest…

Zuko remembered a moment too late, as Ty Lee pushed open the doors to the inner chamber with a fancy airbending trick, revealing a room filled with bones.

For a minute, they all stared. The skeletons were bent over, larger ones in the front curled over the forms of children, of  _ infants  _ who could not be more than a year old, cradled in their mother’s arms. The children were against the back wall, their hands still holding one another’s even in death, as if they had grabbed for each other in their last moments. Some of the skeletons were missing limbs, others covered in ugly black marks, burns that had gone bone deep—Zuko knew what it was like to be scarred; he could only imagine how long one had held the body to burn it so deeply. One of the skeletons was only a pile of twisted bones, one of the ribs lying nearby. He didn’t know if it was because of animals, or if a soldier had seen the child and pulled out their ribs, one by one. There were more children, too, missing limbs that couldn’t be attached, the floor and the amputation points seared a charcoal black. If Zuko concentrated, he could smell the smoke in the air, imagine this temple, this  _ sacred  _ place being filled with it, the Air Nomads choking and struggling to breathe, surrounded in their bubbles of air, moments before the doors would be kicked in and all of them massacred.

Bile rose in his throat and Zuko choked it back down. His sister was being quiet, and when Zuko looked back, he saw her still lingering in the entrance, her arms crossed and a small frown on her face as she surveyed the destruction. She looked a mix between pleased and disappointed, though Zuko had no idea what could have possibly invoked such an emotion in her. Her dark eyes were fixated on the skeletons. 

The Air Nomads had not gone down fighting. These were the skeletons of a people who had tried to save their loved ones, who had valiantly tried to shut the doors and thrown themselves over the young ones, but they had all died for  _ nothing  _ in the end. No, not nothing: they had died so the Fire Nation could start to burn, so the world could see what hope looked like going up in flames.

The floor was crumbling, stone singed in large arcs. The walls held the remains of fire, of blood. The dome had been shattered, the once beautiful stained glass now a fractured picture. It had showed the Air Nomads connection with the spirits, but the bridge in the illustration had been broken in, now lying in scattered glass across the floor. It was too symbolic, really.

Ty Lee took a staggering step forward. Her staff fell to the floor, glass and broken stone crunching beneath her feet. She knelt in front of the skeletons, reaching out with shaking hands. Zuko leaned forward, seeing what she had picked up: a staff, smaller than hers but still identical in shape and form. Trembling, she stood it up, exhaling, and it expanded out, revealing a glider identical to her’s, but this one had been burned, tattered bits of cloth and paper hanging off it, the wings only skeletal outlines.

She let out a guttural cry, wind whipping through the open doors and slamming them hard against the opposite wall. Zuko only narrowly missed getting crushed, nimbly ducking into a roll. He felt them pass behind him, his hair raising from the air. 

The dome above them shattered, and Zuko ducked again, seeing a flare of blue that indicated Azula was alive and breathing. He shielded his eyes, seeing a column of wind funneling around Ty Lee, sweeping in broader and broader strokes, chunks of stone and bone starting too get swept up in it. Her eyes and arrows were glowing, an almost audible hum emitting from them.

Zuko cursed, trying to get to his feet, only to flatten himself down as a piece of stone spun dangerously close. He drew his swords and slashed through the next one, looking around for cover and his sister, only for him to see Azula rising to a standing position, eyes narrowed and focused. He watched her bend, twist, and then he was on his feet and racing towards her, crying, “Azula,  _ don’t _ !” as she sent a blast of fire at Ty Lee.

Zuko tackled his sister and bent over her, turning wide eyed to see the wind absorb the impact of the flame, causing sparks to shower across the ground. Ty Lee’s body jerked and then she fell down to the ground, landing hard on her feet and letting out another sharp cry. Her hands flashed out and a gust of wind that felt like needles swept Zuko up and slammed him into the wall. He felt something crack, landing heavily on his wrist, which twisted, his whole right side feeling bruised.

Azula picked herself up, and Zuko groaned, doing the same and immediately regretting putting his weight on his injured wrist. He’d have to examine it more carefully later; an injured arm was a quick death for a swordsman such as himself.

Ty Lee was shaking, her back to them, staring at the burned and torn glider and the bones around it on the floor. “The Fire Nation did this,” she said, her voice tight with rage. “They  _ slaughtered  _ them.” Her tattoos were sputtering, flickering silver and then fading to blue. Zuko wasn’t sure what that meant for Ty Lee’s spiritual connection or her grasp of her power, but he didn’t think it was anything good.

“We did tell you,” Azula said indifferently, brushing dust and dirt from her clothes with distaste written across her face.

Ty Lee whirled, pain and anger splashed so openly across her face. “You—you did this! Your  _ family  _ did this to us! How can you—how can you act like none of this, like none of this  _ matters _ ?”

Azula’s eyes narrowed. “It happened a century ago,” she spat. “It’s not  _ our  _ problem.”

Ty Lee laughed, shaking her head. It was wrong, to see the happy sound fall from her twisted lips. “I’m so stupid,” she whispered. “An hour ago, I was talking about how much I  _ trusted  _ you.” This, she directed at Zuko, who looked at her impassively. He wanted to ask her where all the hope and optimism she had talked about earlier had gone, but he didn’t. Hearing about a tragedy was one thing, confronting the bones was another all together.

“You can only trust us as much as you’re willing to,” he said, carefully. “And I don’t expect you to want to, now, but like it or not, you need to learn the elements and end the war, and my sister is likely the  _ only  _ firebender you’ll find willing to teach you. You won’t get far on your own, either. You might be the Avatar, but that only means the Fire Nation will want you dead. You’ll need both of us by your side if you want to survive the month, the week, even.”

Azula sighed and stepped forward, crossing her arms. “What my brother won’t say is that either you’re with us, or against us. And if you’re against us, I personally won’t mind bringing you back to our father in chains and securing Zuzu here his place in Court once again, as well as my position as his heir.” She smiled sweetly. “My brother is the only thing stopping me, really.”

Ty Lee sunk to the floor, rubbing at her eyes. Tears glistened on her cheeks, spattering the dry stone around her. “Only a monster would do this.” She sounded soulless.

Zuko took a step forward. “After the initial genocide, Fire Lord Sozin decreed a bounty on any surviving airbender’s head. Those found assisting or hiding them were to be executed—them  _ and  _ their family. Those who turned them in were issued a reward that could feed the poorest families for more than a year. Anyone suspected of harboring sympathy towards them or practicing Air Nomad ways were sent to be ‘reducated’, but most of them died in torture chambers or prison camps.”

He swallowed. Ty Lee was crying silently, her eyes red and raw. “It’s an ugly truth, but the Fire Nation has been implementing propaganda to brainwash its citizens into believing we’re ‘right’ about this war for a century. Agni,  _ I  _ believed that the Fire Nation was ‘sharing their great culture to savages’ until I saw the Air Temples for myself, and even then it’s taken me up until now to slowly unlearn it, and it’s still hard.”

“So all the airbenders are dead,” Ty Lee whispered. “They’re  _ all  _ dead. Not just because of this, but because their fellow human beings turned on them? For  _ money _ ?”

“Patriotism is a dangerous thing if used incorrectly,” Zuko told her. “Honor and loyalty are the best traits a person can have, but they can be easily manipulated.” Like him, he thought. His father had taken his honor, and it was likely Zuko would have spent the rest of his life chasing a dream in order to restore it if he hadn’t realized he’d been giving his honor and loyalty to the only person in the world who didn’t deserve it.

Yet, even now, he still dreamed of returning home, reclaiming his crown, bowing at his father’s feet and being received with open arms.

It was always at that point in the dream that Zuko knew he was asleep: he would look up and see his father’s open arms burst into flame, holding him down and burning him as he struggled and screamed, until all he could do was writhe as his face melted away, flesh sliding off and revealing blood and bones.

“Then I’ll have to save them,” Ty Lee murmured. She smiled sadly. “Because it’s my duty, right?” They said nothing. She rose, gentle folding the broken glider back in and laying it down gently in front of a small skeleton curled into a fetal position. Her eyes were pained. “How long do I have?”

“Until Sozin’s comet at the end of the summer,” Azula replied. “Then father plans to take the rest of the Earth Kingdom by force and raze it to the ground.”

Zuko felt sick. “How do you know that?” he asked, reeling with shock.

Azula looked at him disdainfully, as if he should already know the answer. “Father loves to brag to me,” she responded. She sighed. “He’ll be disappointed to hear I’ve become a traitor.”

Zuko looked at his sister carefully, trying to read into the statement, but he couldn’t find a double meaning that said she was going to turn on him. His sister had always cared more for power than family—as long as Zuko could offer her power, she would be by his side. He didn’t feel good about it, but growing up with her for twelve years had taught him that he and his sister would never be like normal siblings. Even being related was a power game to Azula, one Zuko had lost repeatedly.

“Four months,” Ty Lee said, swallowing. “Okay. I’m...ready. But first…” She hesitated, looking at the skeletons.

Azula rolled her eyes and stepped forward, slipping into a strong firebending stance. Zuko could recognize the kata it was from immediately—he had studied the katas daily in an attempt to awake his inner flame, and when he had discovered he was never going to be able to bend fire, he had instead applied it to swordsmanship.

Now, he watched his sister roll her wrists, inhale, and fire a concentrated beam of blue flame at the skeletons. It skipped across the bones, quickly engulfing all of them. Her fire was hot, hotter than the sun, and the bones quickly dissolved into ash, the fire eating away at them like a starving child devoured a scrap of food.

“If you have any prayers,” Azula said. “Say them now.” She turned and started to walk towards the door as Ty Lee knelt and bowed her head, calling over her shoulder, “When you’re done, come out to the pavilion. Now’s as good a time as any for your first firebending lesson.”

* * *

The Princess was waiting for Ty Lee when she finally finished grieving and praying for the ashes of her people, sucking up her tears and putting on a straight face before exiting the temple, prepared to learn firebending with everything she had. She hardly moved when Ty Lee stepped onto the raised platform, only looked at her in disinterest.

Ty Lee swallowed and gripped her staff a little tighter. She wasn’t sure how to feel around this girl, who was the same age as her but seemingly infinitely more talented and collected than Ty Lee could ever dream to be. 

The Princess rose to her feet. She was slight, but cruelly beautiful, her hair dark as ink, her eyes molten gold that were a shade darker than her brother’s, her lips curved into an amused smile that Ty Lee thought was more directed  _ at  _ her than with her. She was dressed simply, in red and black armor sleeker than any design Ty Lee was used to seeing. Her wrist guards were strapped on tight, matching the ones around her calves. Her hair was up, in a near bun, a gold hairpin slid through it ceremoniously. She and her brother shared similar features, but it was hard for Ty Lee to associate the two of them with familiarity. Azula held herself much more  _ regally,  _ even dressed more like royalty. On the other hand, Zuko wore only simple gold and red, his hair in a loose top knot with no ornamental decorations, only his blades. Ty Lee hadn’t even realized there were two of them until she had seen him use them in the Temple.

It occurred to her, suddenly, that Zuko wasn’t a firebender. Or maybe he was, and she just hadn’t seen him use it yet. But if he was a firebender, why did he use swords? And why was Azula the only one who seemed to be an active firebender? Still, it was strange for  _ royalty  _ to be born firebenders, especially oldest sons. Ty Lee had read, once, that the Fire Nation killed firstborns that weren’t firebenders, but she was sure that had been a piece of misinformation. 

“Most firebenders start with learning control,” Azula said, jumping straight into the lesson without preamble. Her feet had slid into a stance without Ty Lee realizing, palms pressed together. “They meditate with candles and burn leaves. However, we don’t have time for you to learn the basics like a two year old.” Ty Lee tried not to take offense, really, but it was hard to not feel uncomfortable at being subjected to sharp words. 

“Then what  _ are  _ we going to start with?” she asked timidly, edging back a step. 

Azula’s lip curled. “ _ I  _ am going to see if  _ you  _ can unlock your fire chakra enough to summon a flame.”

“How?” Ty Lee asked, trying not to sound skeptical. 

Azula straightened. “Air and Fire are more related than you might think. This is usually Zuzu’s spiel, so only give you the short version: air fans fire and fire needs air to live. You can master air, then fire should be easy enough.”

Ty Lee shifted uneasily. “But fire—”

“Stop,” Azula said. “Fire is the most dangerous and volatile element there is, but that’s what makes it the most  _ powerful _ . If you waste time being scared of it, you’re nothing more than a coward.” She paused. “Cowardice is worthy of being killed in the Fire Nation. I’m sure  _ you  _ wouldn’t understand it, but it’s essential that you learn to control fire before it controls you. Understand, Avatar?”

“...Yeah,” Ty Lee said, even if it only made sort of sense. She would learn it eventually, force the words through her brain if she had to. It was vital, after all, that she mastered all four elements, even if unease was swirling in her belly as she stared at Azula’s blue flame and wondered if fire was the last thing her sister’s had seen before they were burned alive. Had they fought? Would she...would she even be able to identify their skeletons if she found them? 

“Focus!” Azula snapped, and Ty Lee was reminded that she didn’t have  _ time  _ to mourn. She had had one hundred years to do that, and she had spent that century in an  _ iceberg _ . The time for regrets was past. She would have to only look forward now, focus on the present and what she needed to accomplish.

Currently, that was this firebending lesson, the beginning of her journey to fully becoming the Avatar. 

“Where do I start?” she asked, attempting to copy Azula’s stance. She laid her glider off to the side, her hands fidgety without the weight of the wood in her hands, but she knew she had to face fire with an empty grasp. From what she remembered of visiting the Fire Nation and studying bending texts was that fire was a combative, hands on element. You had to face it head on in order to fully combat it.

“Firebending comes from one’s emotions,” Azula explained. “Most people rely on anger, or rage. Some learn to do better, but most firebend because they have something to  _ fight  _ for.”

“Do you use anger?” Ty Lee asked as tentatively as possible, wondering if she could, but she had never been one to hold back her curiosity—the Air Nomads were an open people who had kept few secrets. They had been about community, about being embraced and being loved in trying times. 

Except now Ty Lee was on her own, her people, her family, and her friends were all dead, and there was no one to turn to except for two Fire Nation siblings who seemed to dislike her, but were willing to stand by her. She could work with that, she told herself. She could do it. She was a fast learner, after all. She had mastered airbending quicker than the rest of her sisters, after all.

Azula was still considering her question, at a loss for a quick and sharp answer for once. Finally, she spoke, saying, “I don’t rely on something as little as  _ emotion _ . Rage is for beginners to work with, not masters.”

Ty Lee sucked in a breath. “Are you really a master?” she asked, wide eyed. “You’re so young!”

“Anyone can become a master if they’re prodigy enough,” Azula answered, sounding strangely defensive. “Just ask Zuzu if you don’t believe me.  _ I  _ will be the next Fire Lord for my Nation, and I can be nothing but the best.”

She sounded intense, but Ty Lee had to be the  _ Avatar _ , so maybe she could understand where the other girl’s need for perfection came from. Ty Lee, too, would have to be  _ the best  _ if she wanted to survive this and save the world.

“First, stance,” Azula said. “Fire, like all bending, comes from your core, but you use your hands and your feet too. You need to be balanced at all times. How you’re standing now? I can easily push you over.” Ty Lee turned, glancing at her stance in confusion, only to look back just in time for Azula to shove her over with hardly any force. She hit the ground, a cloud of dust rising with her, and coughed.

“On your feet,” Azula commanded, her voice leaving no room for argument. Ty Lee grimaced and complied, rubbing the ache away. “Feet shoulder width apart, shoulders squared, drop your core, stop standing like you’re prepared to leap into the air at the first sign of trouble, that’s what  _ airbenders  _ do. Firebenders need to be light on their feet, but they also need to keep themselves grounded.” Sharp fingers poked at Ty Lee, forcing her to adjust even the most minuscule of ways. She could feel her frustration rising, but she tampered it down with a soothing breath of air. It was too early to be upset.  _ Patience is a blessing _ , her mother had used to tell her as she had braided Ty Lee’s hair, fingers combing along her scalp.  _ I know it’s not easy dealing with your sisters, but I appreciate you trying to keep them together. You’re my little sunshine. _

“—Pay attention!” Azula’s voice rang out and Ty Lee’s eyes flew open just in time to see a blast of fire coming towards her. She helped and leaped, a gust of air assisting her. The fire flew harmlessly beneath her, exploding out into the open air. Azula’s eyes flashed bronze. “I told you to keep your feet on the ground,” she said, voice so deadly calm that it made Ty Lee shiver. “It will help you when you learn earthbending too. You can’t keep avoiding things.”

She was right in front of Ty Lee, standing toe to toe, her arms angrily resting on her hips. Ty Lee looked away, feeling tears in her eyes as Azula spat, “You can’t just  _ run away  _ at the first sigh of conflict. How are you going to save the world if your first instinct is to  _ disappear,  _ Ty Lee?”

“I don’t know!” Ty Lee said, her voice wavering as her head snapped up to face the Princess. “I...I can’t just get this down in a day! We’re not all prodigies like you.”

Azula huffed, and Ty Lee could feel the hot air waft over her. It smelled like smoke. “You’re the Avatar. You have to get this down in a day. We don’t have time for your learning curve.”

Ty Lee wanted to rise to the fight, but she held back, letting out a breath. Azula smiled. “You’re just like my brother,” she murmured as Ty Lee shifted her feet again, bringing in her arms and letting her chest fall, shoulders out and fists clenched. She balanced on the balls of her feet, feeling the muscles in her legs. Azula gave what seemed to be a hum of satisfaction, then proceeded to jab quickly at Ty Lee’s sensitive points. It hurt, but there were less than last time, and eventually she held a pose that was deemed acceptable by her teacher.

“Show me your punch,” the Princess commanded. Ty Lee complied, a weak puff of air coming from her fist as she jabbed it into the space in front of her. Azula made a sharp tsking sound. “Hit like you want to  _ hurt _ .”

“But I don’t  _ want  _ to hurt something,” Ty Lee replied nervously, shifting her weight back and immediately getting shoved back into place by a sharp spurt of heat across the back of her knees.

“Azula!” Zuko called. He had come into the courtyard, apparently having finished watching the bones burn. Ty Lee wondered what had happened to the ashes. Had they been blown away, or would they lay there as a reminder of the bones and brings that had once been in their place? 

“ _ What _ ,” Azula said, turning her attention away from Ty Lee for a moment, though Ty Lee doubted she would be able to relax.

Zuko frowned. “We’re not in the Fire Nation. You’re her teacher, not her tyrant. Be gentle.”

Azula scoffed. “If I don’t burn her, someone else will.”

“That doesn’t make it right,” her brother responded calmly, as if they had argued about this before. He was wrapping cloth around his wrist as if it was second nature, cinching it with a tight knot and tucking the excess as he cradled it near his chest. Ty Lee didn’t remember how he had hurt it, but she had a vague recollection it had probably had something to do with her losing it. Guilt rushed through her, fast as a torrent.

Azula had been quiet for a long moment, unusually. Ty Lee glanced up at her and saw her eyes resting on her brother’s face—no, not his face, Ty Lee realized. On his scar.

It was an ugly thing. It stretched across his skin, a dark red that indicated how deep the burn had gone, accented with lighter pink. His eye was a narrow gold slit; the scar wrapped around his ear, the hair in uneven grooves around it. Ty Lee hadn’t looked at it properly before, or earlier, but she could see it clearly now. It looked...horrible. Air Nomads weren’t supposed to judge people on their outer appearances, but something in Ty Lee’s gut twisted all the same. Who would do that to a  _ kid _ ?

“Don’t tell me how to teach her,” Azula finally answered, her eyes flickering away from Zuko’s face as he looked up, testing grabbing his swords and grimacing, rubbing at his wrist with a sigh. “You’re not a firebender.”

“You’re not?!” Ty Lee exclaimed, clapping a hand over her mouth at her outburst.

Zuko looked at her with a wry smile. “Is that surprising?”

She shook her head vehemently. “I-I didn’t mean it like that!”

“It’s okay,” Zuko said. “That’s everyone’s reaction.” Somehow, that made Ty Lee feel worse. It was obvious it wasn’t a reaction he liked. “It’s rare in royalty, but I’m a nonbender.” He tapped his swords.

“Oh,” Ty Lee said, embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” Zuko said, voice flat. “I mean...not anymore, anyways.”

“You’d never be able to keep up with me,” Azula said with a sharp laugh.

“Good thing I don’t try to, then,” her brother said, as if this was ordinary sibling banter instead of being vaguely insulting. Maybe it was some newfound Fire Nation cultural thing? Or maybe they were just like that. Ty Lee’s own sisters had never been the nicest, but a bit of sibling rivalry was to be expected in septuplets.

“I’d suggest stepping back, Zuzu,” Azula said lightly. “We’re about to teach the Avatar how to blast fire.”

“Noted.” He stepped back, sitting on the edge of one of the fountains and watching them with sharp eyes, even if he was far away. Was he blind in his other eye? Surely the vision and hearing on his left side had to be impaired in some way or the other, but Ty Lee bit down on her curiosity. They weren’t close enough to ask something like that.

“Back in position!” Ty Lee immediately shifted back, despite the urge to fly into the air at the sudden sound of Azula’s voice directed at her. 

“Look inside of yourself,” Azula continued, pacing in front of her. “What do you feel? Where’s your flame?”

Ty Lee closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to find some stirring in her stomach, but coming up empty. “I feel...nothing,” she said. “I’m confused...and I’m sad, but those aren’t  _ important _ .” Zuko made a sound at that, but Ty Lee didn’t risk turning her head to see his expression.

“You aren’t angry?” Azula asked, suspiciously. 

Ty Lee exhaled. “It’s going to be okay,” she said, carefully. “We don’t hold onto our negative emotions. It’s important to let them go.”

“ _ Pacifists _ ,” Azula murmured, spitting the word as if it was a curse. Ty Lee felt, for a short second, something flare up in her belly at it, something hot, but it was gone so quickly she thought she must have imagined it. 

“Renewal, hope, and peace are  _ good  _ things,” she argued, still trying to feel her inner flame, her eyes screwed tightly shut.

“Hope is the  _ first  _ thing to die in a war,” Azula said, unrelenting. Ty Lee took in another deep breath. “Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?” Ty Lee asked, her eyes opening. The Princess was frowning at her, mouth in a flat line of unhappiness.

“Stop  _ calming  _ yourself. You’re not letting yourself  _ feel  _ anything. Emotions are crucial to bending.”

Ty Lee opened and closed her mouth. “That’s not how  _ airbending  _ works.”

“Then suck it up,” Azula hissed. “Because that’s how being the Avatar works.” Her fists ignited into thin blue daggers of flame. “For example, right now I’m  _ furious  _ at you.” She spun and sent a dagger of flame flying straight at Ty Lee’s throat.

Ty Lee helped and dove to the side, feeling the heat as it crossed next to her, sheathing through the ends of her hair. She gasped, touching it, watching the inch of hair scatter across the ground, her hair tie falling with it. Her braid was already unraveling.

“Hit me,” Azula commanded. Ty Lee frowned, shifting back into her stance despite the bruised heels of her feet, and threw a punch forward, but only managed to summon a small gust of wind that the Princess easily dissipated with a whirl of blue fire. She narrowed her dark gold eyes. “Aren’t you mad that I tried to kill you?”

“You’re just trying to teach me,” Ty Lee responded with a shrug and a smile. Zuko shifted in her peripheral vision, and she could sense his breath catch in his throat, but she wasn’t sure why.

Azula pinched her nose. “You’re insufferable,” she said. “Fine, we’ll try a new tactic.” She rose to her full height. “Earlier, you entered the Avatar State.  _ That’s  _ the kind of emotion you need.”

“Azula—” Zuko said, rising to his feet.

“Let me handle this,” Azula returned, raising a hand at him. Flames danced across her fingers easily, almost lazily.

“Your people were dead. Your people were  _ murdered mercilessly  _ and  _ burned to death,  _ waiting for  _ someone  _ to save them.” Ty Lee closed her eyes and tried to concentrate, but Azula’s words were unscathing and refused to go unheard. 

“They died waiting for  _ you _ , Ty Lee, because you were supposed to  _ save them _ , but you ran away, didn’t you? You ran away, and they died!” The Princess’ voice was cruel and unforgiving, sharp and insistent, mocking her and Ty Lee knew this, she knew this—

“At least you’re finally an only child though, right?”

“Shut up!” Ty Lee screamed, swinging her fist. Fire exploded forth, white hot and tinged orange. Azula’s smile faded as she thrust her hands out in front of her and blocked the blast. Ty Lee gasped, straightening and struggling to regain her breathing.

“That’s more like it.” Azula’s eyes were shining with a bright, almost maniacal, happiness, whether it was at Ty Lee’s success or her own.

“That was mean,” Ty Lee whispered, still feeling the remains of fire flickering in her stomach, warm and cooling through her bloodstream. It was something she was unused to, but the longer it went on, the more it became natural and harder to pinpoint.

“It  _ worked _ ,” Azula responded. “And now your inner fire has been awakened, hasn’t it? And you were going to hear that eventually, whether you wanted to or not. Nothing lost, something gained. It’s how the world works.”

Ty Lee looked at her still smoking fingers. She knew, logically, that the Princess was right. Surely, she would face worse than a few sentences, but that didn’t stop her from feeling as if the words had dug under her skin with fishing hooks and gotten stuck there, unable to be removed without cutting through flesh and bone. It felt too soon to confront it, yet it had all been thrown into her face before  _ she  _ had time to even fully process the fact that she was a century later in the world than she had left it in.

Zuko was watching them, carefully, a hand still poised at the hilts of his swords. Prepared to fight, Ty Lee wondered, or intervene? Or defend himself? Neither option made her feel good, especially when she noted his injured wrist that she was nearly one hundred percent sure had been her fault in one way or the other.

Azula had fallen back into her stance. Ty Lee took one more deep breath, feeling the beginnings of a flame race through her blood. It wasn’t tangible, or easy to grasp, but it was a start, and she was going to have to start again many more times. At least now she had a foothold she could rely on to hold her steady as she tried to reach higher the next time.

“Let’s do it again,” she said, firmly. Azula smiled and obliged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this chapter was enjoyable and Ty Lee's POV! I'm still trying my best to write and flesh out the characterization; again, it's gonna be ooc, probably. 
> 
> Next chapter will be Kyoshi Island! Leave a comment or a kudo to give your author some fuel!


	3. 三

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, I'm so sorry for the late update! I was away on vacay last week, and I didn't write in like two weeks, so I had trouble finishing this one up. However, thank you so much for all the comments saying they looked forward to where this was going!! They were really inspiring :) 
> 
> There aren't many warnings for this chapter, just slight canon compliant violence.

After another day and night at the Southern Air Temple, where Azula taught Ty Lee the basic katas and forms for firebending and carefully avoided any further burns across the scorched marble, they left once again. Zuko was aware of the clock ticking down, of time wasted and time spent. The first time Sozin’s comet had come, the Air Nomads had been wiped out entirely. Now, his father planned to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and desecrate the Earth Kingdom.

Zuko wondered, sickly, why it was worth it. What was the reason behind the act, the logic behind the madness? Had his father finally lost it in the three years Zuko had been gone? Was he even a man anymore, or simply a power hungry tyrant?  _ Could Zuko have stopped him if he had been brave enough and  _ stayed?

“Moshi’s getting tired,” Ty Lee called back to them, her hand resting on the sky bison’s head. “We need to set down soon, or she’ll crash. She’s still getting used to flying long distances without rest.” Her staff rested across her knees expertly, and she herself was bright eyed despite the mental strain that was beginning to wear on Zuko. He was used to traveling long distances with only the waves to keep him company and the stoic faces of his crew, but there was nothing to concentrate on here, only how far away the ground was and  _ had they risen even higher since he looked last time _ ?

“There’s nothing but ocean here,” Azula objected, wrinkling her nose. Zuko dared another look down at the choppy blue waves, darkening as the sky above them stretched into sunset quickly. They were darkening, shapes moving like dark shadows beneath the surface. He didn’t anticipate a crash there to be comfortable in any way.

“There’s an island coming up,” he said, pointing at the dark expanse on the horizon, dipped dark green by the fading light. “It should be Kyoshi Island.”

“How do you know?” Ty Lee asked, turning around. 

Zuko straightened. “Lala can double check. Firebenders have an internal compass related to the sun.”

Azula sighed and also sat tall, stretching out her arms and narrowing her eyes. “We’re on track north,” she said, which wasn’t really what Zuko had wanted to hear, but it was an answer all the same. Despite Azula having the inner flame and connection to Agni, Zuko had always been uncannily good at directions, as if there was a compass spinning between his ribs rather than a heart beating.

“I always wanted to visit Kyoshi Island,” Ty Lee said. “It’s where Avatar Kyoshi lived, after all. Do you think if we went there, I’d be able to connect with her spirit?”

Zuko frowned. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m pretty sure Kyoshi is inhabited, but…” The knowledge was slipping his mind. He’d paid it some attention, but Kyoshi Island was a neutral party in the war not worth their time or attention as long as they didn’t turn on the Fire Nation.

“I don’t see any sign of it being occupied,” Ty Lee whispered, squinting at the rapidly approaching island. “But we’re going to have to land. Moshi can’t go much further.” She laid a hand on the sky bison’s head anxiously. They were indeed sweeping lower and lower, until the trees were in front of them and Zuko could reach out a hand and skim the surface of the water. Moshi gave one last flop of her tail and they cleared the beach, sailed above the trees, and then crashed down through them.

Zuko instinctively grabbed for his sister and ducked his head down as branches tore at them, feeling something slash through his shirt, the leaves and branches sharp against any exposed skin, scraping him as he fell past quickly. He heard a thump, loud and jarring, and then he was thrown from Moshi’s saddle, likely from the impact of landing, and he slammed across the forest floor, landing hard on his previously injured wrist. He thought he heard something crack, but when he opened his eyes, everything was spinning and blurry in an unpleasant way. 

_ Azula,  _ Zuko thought, pushing himself up with his good arm and ignoring how his head screamed bloody murder at that and his stomach tried to make him expel its contents into the dusty ground he lay on. He could process his injuries later—he needed to find his sister, and then he needed to find Ty Lee, who was  _ probably  _ fine since she was an airbender and likely very capable of softening her fall, but she was also small, and Zuko needed to get used to looking out for  _ two  _ fifteen year old girls with more power than the world should have given a child so young.

Pushing through the branches and debris of felled trees, Zuko realized he just have been thrown further than he thought, because he wasn’t sure where Moshi was, much less his traveling companions. It made his heart beat fast in his chest, because what if they were  _ hurt _ —

A sweep of blue flame through the tree line cut off that line of thought quickly enough, and Zuko swore, darting through the undergrowth and reaching for his swords. They were both still there, though there was a set of leaves tangled around the hilts, which he tore off. He had to stop and breath for a moment after he first started moving, doubling over and retching as quietly as he could into the bushes. It only served to make his head pound more and his stomach feel stretched and empty, but at least the sensation had faded from his throat, leaving only a bitter aftertaste coating his mouth and tongue.

He reached the tree line and saw Moshi through the bushes, looking bleary eyed. Next, Zuko saw the net across her back and over her paws and knew they were in trouble.

It was only this realization that made him able to dodge the blow that fame at his back, feeling the air behind him change and drawing his swords as he fell into a crouch, spinning outward and stumbling back into the clearing. There was a blur of green and white, and Zuko instinctively blocked, scrambling for purchase, desperate to see Azula, but all he could focus on were the dances of blue flames flickering across the sky, untraceable to where she was in the surrounding area.

Where was Ty Lee? Zuko tried to look for her, to pinpoint the oranges and yellow of her outfit, but he couldn’t concentrate with his head splitting in two and his balance dizzy, as if the ground was spinning as he tried to move. He wished he was a bender, hopelessly—if it meant healing faster, he would take it in a heartbeat. 

The person attacking him seemed to move in a whirl of skirts, and Zuko could only defend himself with his swords, unable to slash at them without exposing himself. Another injury, at this point, would be entirely too detrimental. 

Shifting his weight, Zuko flexed his fingers around the hilts of his dao swords and ignored the white hot pain that seemed embedded in the thin bones of his wrist as he pushed himself to a standing position, blocking another hit from—were those  _ fans _ ? 

Avatar Kyoshi had fought with fans, Zuko remembered vaguely. Though he was sure it had been more for the benefit of her bending than close combat. He tried to assess the situation, count his attackers, but he was moving on pure instinct, the world in front of him nothing more than a blur of colors.

Something brushed the side of his shirt and Zuko looked down to see a thin line of red appearing across the pale skin. He cursed, dropped to the ground, and cut out someone’s knees from under them, his sword tangling in thick green fabric that fell across his face. He shook it off, felt mud coating his clothes, and looked up to see a fan coming straight towards him. He rolled, slamming into the trunk of the tree and further disorienting himself.

He looked up and thought he saw his sister’s face, heard a voice say something warped in his bad ear, “Knock him out,” and then something struck his already pounding head and his vision went dark.

* * *

Zuko came to slowly, feeling as if he had been run over by the prow of a warship. His head hurt so badly; he definitely had a concussion of sorts, which was quite possibly the worst injury to have. Someone had rewrapped and set his wrist, though, which was a kindness he couldn’t muddle out.

“Are you awake, Zuzu?” Azula asked, her voice loud in his good ear. He jerked back and then grimaced at the ache it set out in his head, as if his skull was being beaten like a drum. 

She was tied up next to him—they were tied to a pole, Zuko realized, hands and feet and waists bound to it. There was metal on her wrists, some kind of fabric wrapped around her hands. They hadn’t gagged her, though, which was their mistake: as long as she had oxygen, fire was her domain. 

Ty Lee craned her head around the pole from where she was tied at Zuko’s other side. She was sporting a bruised cheekbone and her clothes were in disarray, a large rip through her sleeves that left it hanging off her arm in shreds. However, she was  _ still  _ smiling, looking bright despite the blue around her eyes.

“Zuko!” she cried. “I thought you were dead!”

Zuko looked at her. “What happened?” he asked.

“We crashed,” Ty Lee said, a sympathetic expression on her face. “Then we got ambushed by a bunch of warriors in face paint.”

“And then we  _ all  _ got captured?” Zuko said, squinting. “Were they benders?”

“Ty Lee here airballed herself into a tree,” Azula recounted with disgust. “Then I saw  _ you  _ getting dragged by a bunch of girls, so there was really no point resisting.” She sighed. “They claim this cloth is fireproof, but it’s smoking delightfully.” Zuko looked at her hands—the cloth was curling black slowly but surely. 

“We should keep a sample of it,” he murmured. “It could be useful if it’s managed to hold you for that long.” The sky outside the tent they were in was light, meaning at least the night had passed. It also meant he’d been out for that long as well, which wasn’t good. 

“Want to lock me up?” Azula snorted, the last remains of the cloth burning away. Zuko rolled his eyes.

“As if anything can hold  _ you _ .”

She smiled, sharp and predatory. “You’re right.”

“Are we breaking out?” Ty Lee asked innocently, working at her own bonds.

Zuko looked around. He could only see slivers of the town outside the gap in the tent, the occasional flash of green skirts. They were in broad daylight, likely in the center of a town. He had no idea what bursting free would look like, and he wasn’t exactly keen to find out, but what other option did they have? It wasn’t like they could afford to stay prisoner here, not when the days were already wasting and all Ty Lee could do was go big or go home when it came to firebending, an element that relied entirely too much on  _ control  _ for Zuko’s liking.

He sighed. “I guess we are. Where did they put my swords?”

Azula shrugged. “Who knows; they’re replaceable.”

“They took my glider, too, though,” Ty Lee cut in. “And that’s not replaceable.”

“It’s just a stick,” Azula argued.

“Lala, I know you’re confident in your ability to completely terrorize this village,” Zuko started. “And it’s not like I’m going to stop you, but it would be more beneficial in the long run if both Ty Lee and I could get our...weapons back.” He wasn’t exactly sure  _ what  _ Ty Lee’s glider was used for; probably not fighting.

“We need Moshi, too,” Ty Lee chimed in. “I don’t know where they put her.” She looked glum, anxiety vibrating around her frame, the air around them gently whipping at their hair. 

“Okay,” Zuko said. “Can’t you just call her? I’m sure she’s strong enough to break free.”

Ty Lee shrugged, evidently not knowing the answer to this. Then she stilled. “People are coming,” she whispered, the wind around them dying. Zuko wondered, once again, if it was something she was conscious of, her passive bending.

They all stilled as the tent flap was pulled back and three warriors stalked in, all wearing skirts of deep green, black padded armor lying in flaps over it. Metal headdresses rested on coils of hair, their faces painted a ghost white, with red streaked neatly over their eyes and painted over their lips. Swords rested at their hips, fans folded up next to them.

_ The Kyoshi Warriors _ , Zuko realized, remembering something that definitely should have come to him sooner. The elite all female team of fighters founded by Avatar Kyoshi herself after splitting from the mainland; he had read about them, a little, but people who weren’t your enemies were hardly as important as the people that  _ were _ .

Though he supposed the enemies of his enemy were his friends, now, in some way or the other.

“You’re awake,” the leader said. She was a girl who was probably younger than she looked, her short auburn hair cropped at her chin, a frown on her face. She looked intimidating, the two warriors on either side of her sporting identical glares, facing down the three of them tied to the pole with hostility bright in their gazes.

Azula moved her fingers; Zuko felt them behind his back, and he grabbed them, stilling whatever action she had been about to take. When she tried to jerk free, he shook his head at her as subtly as possible:  _ not now.  _ Not until they had a better understanding of their situation. His sister was far too reckless, for all the control she had over her bending.

“We’ve done nothing to harm you,” Zuko started, calmly. “We—”

A fan was in his face, shoved against his lips, forcing him to shut his mouth. “We didn’t ask  _ you _ , Ashmaker,” the girl on the leader’s right hissed. Her black hair was in a bun, pierced through with a piece of silver that Zuko could easily imagine embedded in his throat. 

Azula laughed, hard. “Zuzu’s not an  _ ashmaker _ ,” she said. “That’s an insult to the Fire Nation.”

“Still Fire Nation,” the center girl said, stepping forward with her arms crossed, her fans dangling in one hand. Despite the loose grasp, Zuko could tell she would be able to snap them open in a moment—training to be a master swordsman had not only made him skilled at using the dual dao, but also at reading other people’s stances, grips, etcetera when it came to fighters and benders.

Ty Lee moved beside him, trying to twist around to see better. “I’m not Fire Nation!” she said, as brightly as possible. 

The girl looked at her impassively. “You’re still traveling with two Fire Nation spies.”

“Hold up,” Zuko said, frowning. He knocked away the fan with his chin, having a momentary glare down with the girl holding it, until the auburn haired one signalled her fellow warrior back to her side. There was a mutter about  _ feeding him to the Unagi.  _ “We’re not spies.”

“Prove it,” the short haired girl said coldly. 

“I’m the Avatar,” Ty Lee said, deadpan and so serious it hurt Zuko to see it in place of her usual lax smile. 

The leader’s head snapped up in surprise, the intimidating glare slipping from her face for a short second. “Impossible,” she said, her voice flat. Zuko could recognize it: there was hope hiding in it, hope that she was desperately attempting to crush.

Ty Lee held up her hands and the ropes fell away. She smiled, bouncing forward with a gust of air that made Zuko cough. The three warriors immediately fell into defensive positions, but Ty Lee merely laughed, showing her hands to them, palms open and empty. Carefully, she conjured a small spiral of air on the center of them, spinning it around and around.

“I’m an airbender,” she said. “Though maybe you already knew that! But, anyways, I’m the Avatar. I haven’t mastered the other elements yet, so I don’t know how I can  _ prove  _ it, but—” She paused and concentrated, nose scrunching up. Slowly, but surely, the air transformed into a faintly flickering orange flame. Azula scoffed, probably at the weakness of it, but Zuko smiled—maybe Ty Lee wasn’t a prodigy like his sister, but he knew many firebenders who had struggled to control a candle for years before being able to summon fire as quickly as that, though he was sure Ty Lee thought it took a tediously long time, if her frown was anything to go by. He would have to talk to her later—he doubted he could change Azula’s teaching style, but he could at least try to boost morale behind the scenes, even though he cringed at the thought. He hadn’t signed up to have two younger sisters, but it wasn’t like he was useful for much else.

_ Useless _ , his father’s voice hissed in his mind, sounding like the crackling of fire, like how the flame had sounded before it had hit his face.

The leader’s lips had parted. She blinked. “You’re-you’re the Avatar. You’re an  _ airbender _ .”

“Not all of them are dead, apparently,” Ty Lee said with a chuckle, but the corners of her eyes were strained. Zuko didn’t know how she was confronting her grief, only that they had had one conversation where she had admitted that she was compartmentalizing to survive and that Azula had made her explode. She hadn’t mentioned it in the last thirty six hours, flying with her constant smile, chatter, and meditative breathing.

The girl dropped back into a short bow, the two warriors at her flank hurriedly following suit. She raised her head, gray blue eyes gleaming with some unspoken emotion. Maybe it was the hope she had tried to crush earlier.

“I am Suki,” she said. “Leader of the Kyoshi Warriors. We are honored to host the Avatar on Kyoshi Island. But—” She hesitated, looking at Zuko and Azula with suspicion clear on her face. “Are these your companions?”

Azula laughed derisively. “We’re not her  _ companions _ ,” she hissed, and Zuko sighed under his breath. He had been forced to grow without pride, but his sister had collected it and built herself a wall of self righteousness. “We are Princess Azula and Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation.”

Zuko pressed his guys closed and wished, so badly, that he could get away with yelling at her just this once.

“Ah,” Suki said, and then there was a fan at Zuko’s throat, pressing in. Maybe she had deemed him less dangerous than Azula, the  _ nonbender _ . Her mistake, Zuko thought to himself, as he straightened, melding his body to the pole, and elbowed her in the side, kicking her out and away, at the knees. She stumbled back, her fan snapping closed, and nearly lost her balance. When she looked back up at him, from a few,  _ safe _ , paces away, her eyes were burning with humiliation.

“We’re not your enemies,” Zuko spat out, knowing that he sounded too hostile for the statement to be believed. “And don’t touch me.”

“Azula’s my firebending teacher!” Ty Lee piped up. Azula smiled, pulling herself free from the bonds, the ropes crumbling to a fine ash. Agni, Zuko wished he had his blades. All he had was the small knife hidden up his sleeve, too high up for him to wiggle down into his hand like he was supposed to.

Suki straightened, looking at them scrutinizingly. “Free him,” she finally said, nodding at Zuko’s still bound body. The girl on her right came forward, cutting through the ropes with a flick of her fans—they came close to Zuko’s chest, and he resisted the urge to slam back further against the pole, his head already aching from the last time he had done it.

He rubbed at his wrists as the ropes fell away; wincing at the rawness of them. His injured wrist was aching, sending fire up and down his body as he moved it. He couldn’t remember the last time he had gotten so many injuries in such a short period—no, he could; when he had still been the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, at his father’s hand.

The Agni Kai had simply been the last time his father had laid a hand on him, but it had definitely not been the first. 

Suki looked at the three of them, her eyes taking on Zuko’s ugly scar, Azula’s cruel eyes, and Ty Lee’s wide smile.

“Shouldn’t you be…” She paused. 

“A hundred and fifteen?” Ty Lee finished wisely. “I mean, chronologically I guess I  _ am _ , but I haven’t aged...at least not in any meaning of the word.”

Suki exhaled. She was remarkably well put together. “Would you like to see the temple?” she asked.

* * *

The temple was smaller in size than Zuko had been expecting. It was dim, buttery sunlight cutting slashes across the floor, illuminating the folds of a uniform— _ the  _ uniform, Zuko realized, upon closer look. What Avatar Kyoshi had worn, complete with fans on the side.

Ty Lee exhaled, accidentally bending the air around her with it. “It feels…” she whispered. “Reverent.” It sounded like an incantation on her tongue as she stepped forward, reaching up a hand and closing her eyes. Zuko stepped forward, only for Ty Lee to freeze in place, her arrows starting to glimmer.

“Don’t bother her,” Suki whispered. “She must have connected with the Spirit World.”

Zuko looked at the frozen Avatar nervously, feeling his skin crawl at the words. He hadn’t been raised on superstition, but he hadn’t been raised with respect either. The Spirit World had always been an unknowable variable in his life, a series of rumors that he had never really confronted. He felt uncomfortable, thinking there was a truth hidden in all the old wives tales about face stealers and curses.

“I’ll take you to your bison,” Suki said. “We should leave her, for now. Nara and Miya can keep watch.” She nodded at the two girls at her side, who split off as they exited the temple, taking up post on either side of the entryway. Zuko glanced back at Azula, who had torn her disinterested gaze away from Ty Lee and was now playing with her fire, taking pleasure in how both Kyoshi Warriors tensed and watched her with trepidation and anger in their eyes.

“You thought we were Fire Nation spies,” Zuko said, his voice hoarse. “Why?”

Suki looked back at him. “Kyoshi Island is a neutral party, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been under watch from the Fire Nation for years. Shouldn’t you know that,  _ Prince _ ?”

Zuko looked at her impassively, used to not rising to jabs. “I haven’t been home in a while,” he said.

“I heard,” Suki answered. “I thought your banishment was Fire Nation propaganda.”

“What did you hear?” Zuko asked. “About it.”

“Not much.” The leader of the Kyoshi Warriors shrugged. “Just that you were. Banished, that is.” Her eyes strayed to his scar. “Are you really a nonbender?”

“Yeah,” Zuko said, trying not to stumble over the word, the admittance of his faults and weaknesses. “I am.”

Somehow, that made Suki smile. “It’s nice,” she ventured. “To know bending isn’t everything when it comes to being powerful.”

Zuko laughed. “There’s a reason my sister is my father’s favorite.”

Her fingers twitched and Zuko stilled, realizing he probably shouldn’t mention his father so casually. 

“How did someone as young as you become leader of these warriors?” he asked.

Suki’s smile was bitter when she turned to look at him. “My family was killed,” she started. “In a mix up with Fire Nation soldiers. We’re a dwindling population...most of the older Warriors were lost, too. So I started it over, for us. For the world.” Her face was grim. Zuko couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say. Her grief was clear, evident in her eyes.

How many people had lost their lives and livelihoods to the Fire Nation? Zuko knew the state of the world, but he had never confronted the individuals. It was easier to think of them as  _ the Earth Kingdom is starving  _ rather than picture the children that were only skin and bones, wasting away because they couldn’t find any food. 

“Here are your swords,” Suki said, stopping. She pulled them from a pile of weapons—confiscated from their enemies? Zuko couldn’t stop the tension from visibly draining from his shoulders as he gripped them, thumbing the worn grip. He swung them onto his back, the weight finally balancing him.

Suki laughed, lightly. “You really are a warrior,” she said. “Though I wouldn’t recommend a lot of fighting. You hurt your head, wrist, and ribs pretty badly. We did our best to psych you up, but you have to be careful not to aggravate your injuries.”

It was Zuko’s turn to laugh as he pulled Ty Lee’s glider from the stack—there was too many blood stained helmets and swords there for Kyoshi Island to be truly neutral. “We won’t be able to hide for long,” he said. “Not with Ty Lee. Trouble is bound to find us, sooner or later.”

“So you both defected,” Suki stated. “To help her do  _ what _ ?”

“Save the world,” Zuko said, aware of how ridiculous the words sounded in his mouth. “Stop the Fire Nation.”

“Both of you?” Suki repeated. Zuko had almost forgotten his sister was there, had forgotten she knew how to stay quiet and listen, if she wanted to. He wished, desperately, that he could read her mind and knew what was compelling her silence.

“Both of us,” Azula asserted, her bronze eyes narrowed. “And that trouble you mentioned earlier, Zuzu? It’s here.”

Her voice was sugary sweet, but that didn’t stop Zuko’s heart from dropping to his knees as he turned, slowly, to see Zhao’s ships on the horizon.

* * *

“Ty Lee.” The Avatar opened her eyes as the sound of her name, expecting to turn and see her friends—because they were friends now, weren’t they—but she found herself alone in the temple. The time of day had changed as well, high noon fading into a golden evening. 

Ty Lee looked back and saw Avatar Kyoshi standing in her uniform in front of her, tall and towering over the younger girl. She stuttered, trying to come up with something clever to say, but what came out was, “How?”

Avatar Kyoshi sighed, but her eyes were flinty. “I summoned you,” she said. “By using our connection as Avatars. It has been too long since I felt it flare, the spiritual power of the Avatar.” She looked down at Ty Lee. “It has been a century, but you have finally awoken.”

Ty Lee nodded. “I—” Her words failed her. “What am I supposed to do?” she finally asked miserably. “I failed them all by being selfish.” Air Nomads weren’t supposed to be  _ selfish _ . They were supposed to put other people first, spread the gift of bending and spirituality to every corner of the world. They didn’t run away, they didn’t fight—and now she was supposed to take on a whole  _ Nation. _

“Maybe you did,” Avatar Kyoshi said. “But you’re here now. It has always been your destiny to end the Fire Lord and restore balance. Perhaps this Fire Lord is not Sozin, as it should have been, but they are the same in every other sense. Greedy, power hungry  _ men  _ who wish to own what is not theirs.”

“I’m not even close to being a master of all four elements,” Ty Lee said, wishing she didn’t sound like such a little girl, whining to the monks about having to go practice bending, when all she wanted to do was practice acrobatics in her room. “I can’t kill the Fire Lord.”

Avatar Kyoshi’s eyes were hard and unforgiving. “It is not about killing a man,” she snarled. “It is about ending a regime of terror. You have four months. You will have to be strong.” Her face softened, or maybe Ty Lee was imagining it, since it was hard to tell beneath the makeup. “You are young, still,” she said. “You are out of time.”

“But the world has no time for me to be young,” Ty Lee finished, looking at her feet, at her colors. The last thing left. The last  _ one _ . 

“You understand,” Avatar Kyoshi said. “You travel with the children of the Fire Lord.” There was something about the way she carefully said the words that put Ty Lee on edge.

“Are you going to tell me now to trust them?” Ty Lee countered, raising her chin. “Because I do.”

“On the contrary,” Kyoshi replied. “Your destinies are intertwined. They have as much as a part to play as you do. Visit Roku’s Island. You will find your answers there.” 

“Answers to what?” Ty Lee asked, but the spirit was flickering, the temples overlapping one another, from past and present. 

Avatar Kyoshi said something, but her voice was so crackly and distant that Ty Lee couldn’t make out what it was.

“What?” she cried, only to be thrown off her feet and back into the real world, the glow fading from her tattoos as fire began to rain from the sky.

* * *

“You led them here,” Suki said, turning with anger in her entire body. 

Zuko couldn’t deny it, saying, “He must have tracked us somehow.”

“We didn’t lead them here on  _ purpose _ ,” Azula said, laughing. Her eyes were alight at the sight of a fight brewing, and Zuko could practically feel her mood skipping. 

Suki’s lips were in a thin line. “Stay here,” she snapped, spinning on her heel and calling out to her fellow Kyoshi Warriors. Zuko watched the docks land, the komodo rhinos crawling out with Fire Nation soldiers on their backs. 

“Ready for a fight?” Azula asked.

Zuko drew his blades, hissing and then tearing a layer of the bandages off his hand recklessly, so he could grip it better. He saw fire streak across the sky, burning through the village made of mud and hay easily enough. Screams rose with the wind; they would be upon them in a moment, maybe less.

“You didn’t answer me,” Azula said lightly.

Zuko rolled his eyes at her—or, rolled his one eye, as the other couldn’t really roll much. “You’re the only person I know who runs towards a fight.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Azula said. “You’re not one to back down either.” She paused. “We do have the same father.”

“And mother,” Zuko agreed. 

“She wasn’t a mother.” Zuko could see the komodo rhino in full detail as it charged closer, the soldier on back sending a flare of fire that the Kyoshi Warriors converging together only just barely were able to block with their fans.

“And he wasn’t a father.”

Azula was quiet. When Zuko turned to look at her, he saw there was a furrow in her brows, deep and drawn, as if she wasn’t used to thinking about it like that. Maybe she wasn’t. Zuko had been Ursa’s favorite and Azula had been Ozai’s: they had grown up believing that favoritism and discrimination and competition was the normal way between siblings, that deprecation and cruelty was the only way to be loved more.

Azula had won those games. She had always been better at being mean. 

Zuko wasn’t sure what it said about him that he couldn’t help but give her second chance after second chance. He couldn’t help loving her; she was his  _ sister _ .

The soldier was upon them and Zuko cut out the rhino from beneath him with a slash that sent red hot blood flooding down his sword handle and spattering across his face. “The hell are you doing?” he yelled at the guard on its back, but the guard only gave a vicious lunge towards him, either not recognizing him or not caring.

“Where is the Avatar, Prince Zuko?!” an all too familiar voice asked, Zhao sauntering up atop a komodo rhino, a dark smile on his face.

Zuko hissed and stabbed the guard in front of him, letting them slip to the ground in a puddle of their own blood. “What are you playing at, Zhao?” he snarled, flicking the blood off with a sweep of silver.

Zhao’s smile faded, an ugly sneer taking its place. “Heard the Avatar was here,” he said. “Imagine my surprise to find the banished Prince here, with his  _ sister  _ at that.”

Zuko stiffened. He hated how Zhao said her name.

“You wouldn’t dare,” he said instead. “I could kill you.”

“Finally,” Zhao hissed. “He says what he wants.” Zuko privately thought that saying what he wanted had never really been a problem for him, because he always followed through. 

“It’s not a crime if the two of you have been declared traitors to the Fire Nation.” Zhao’s face was like crevices in a rock, carved the wrong way.

Zuko smiled mirthlessly. “Word travels fast.”

Zhao’s hands blazed to life. They both understood that the conversation was over.

Zuko ran at him, his feet barely touching the ground, as Azula felled another soldier, laughing as more attempted to come at her. The Island was burning and Ty Lee was nowhere to be seen, but Zuko looked at Zhao and Zhao alone and wanted him dead.

They met in a clash of steel and flame, the heat roaring past Zuko’s head. He ducked, moved, almost hit skin and was met with metal instead. They fought in a whorl of blades, Zuko relishing in the pain wielding his swords brought him, the thrum in his head matching the stampede around them as people ran, buckets sloshing, fans cutting through the air, green skirts flaring in tandem with Azula’s blue fire.

The village was burning, Ty Lee was still in the temple, and the Fire Lord had finally turned against  _ both  _ of his children.

Wait. Maybe they had turned against him first.

Zhao threw a fireball at Zuko and he cut it apart with his swords—thank Agni for durable steel. He could only trust Azula had his back; not that she could have his back, not with this many soldiers on land.  _ Fuck _ . This was only one ship, too, and they were already destroying a sacred island. What were they going to do to the North Pole?

A gust of wind slammed through the courtyard, the fire flaring with it, and Zuko let out every curse he knew as Ty Lee ran into the opening, in clear view of every Fire Nation soldier there. And Zhao. Her tattoos shone brilliant blue, her bangs lifting off her forehead so that her arrow was there for all to see. There was no denying she was an airbender.

Zhao smiled, yelled something that slipped past Zuko’s bad ear, and the game changed.

Zuko barely had time to breath before the Admiral came at him, fireballs in both hands. The air was stifling hot, sweat dripping down his brow from the heat that rolled off the ground in waves from the flickering flames. It was hard to breathe, but Zuko simply sealed his lips and fought on, his swords flashing silver orange red metal fire dodge kick duck  _ survive _ .

Ty Lee was darting nimbly through the crowd, throwing wind and blocking fire carelessly, her eyes intense, focused on the horizon. Zuko wanted to scream at her to stop, to ask her what she was doing, but he could only throw himself in front of Zhao one more time to block him. When Zhao tried to shoot fire at her, Zuko was there to cut it away with his swords. When he feinted, Zuko had already leapt and landed in front of him.

“You can’t keep this up forever.” Zhao was panting. Zuko was breathing evenly.

“I can,” he said. “And I will.”

“I’ll bring you back in chains,” Zhao hissed. “And throw you at your father’s feet.” He laughed, high in the air. “What do you think he’ll do to you,  _ Prince _ ?”

Zuko faltered. It was enough.

He looked up and saw Zhao’s hand coming towards his face, blazing with fire. Zuko tried to move, but all he could see was  _ his father’s face, etched in cruelty _ .

Azula kicked Zhao in the face and Zuko dropped to the ground like a sack of rocks, his chest heaving up and down. His sister stood in front of him, komodo rhinos and Fire Nation soldiers in a heap around them, flames still running rampant.

Then a stream of saltwater fountained over them, drenching them and extinguishing the fires on the island. Zuko’s head jerked up to see Ty Lee riding a sea serpent of some sort—the Unagi? It was massive, scaled in shades of blue and green, frilling around its open mouth as it released more water from its jaws.

“Ugh,” Azula said, the air around her steaming slowly. “Was that really necessary?”

Zuko scrambled to his feet, taking use of the distraction by grabbing his sister and whistling, long and hard. Through the mist and steam that had risen, he saw a flash of green, and then Suki was there.

“This way!” she cried. “Your bison is over here!” Zuko nodded, letting go of Azula and trusting her to follow him as they dashed across puddles, the Unagi rearing its head back for another go. The water was cold on Zuko’s skin, but he welcomed it, let it take the flame, let the heat seep away from his skin. 

Suki threw open the doors to a shed and ducked in, her fans slicing through the net. Moshi huffed and stepped forward. Zuko hurriedly got on her back, Azula sighing and then coming up beside him with a fire powered leap. 

Zuko dove for the reins, then hesitated, looking back at Suki. 

“Go!” she cried, spinning to slay another Fire Nation soldier with a cut of her fan across his throat. Zuko would never underestimate that sort of weapon again—not when it was wielded by a woman such as herself. She paused, the wind and water flying in front of her, her face paint melting off in streams of color.

“Go and save the world,” she said, softly, a smile flickering at her lips. Zuko nodded, jerked the reins, and they soared into the air towards Ty Lee, leaving Suki behind.

“You want me to grab her?” Azula asked, leaning forward with a pleased look in her eyes, all sharp corners.

“Do what you want,” Zuko muttered, letting Moshi take control of the flight as they wove towards the Unagi. He didn’t dare look back at Zhao, not wanting to make himself a target, not wanting to admit they were running away again. 

They swooped toward the Unagi and the slight girl clinging to the frills for dear life, the wind pulling at her the only thing preventing her from falling into the ocean hundreds of feet below. Zuko clung to the saddle as they dipped sideways and Azula reached out and hooked two arms around the Avatar, hauling Ty Lee back onto Moshi before the young airbender realized what had happened.

“What are you doing?” Ty Lee cried, writhing in Azula’s tight grip. Zuko crawled back towards him, hissing as Moshi spun into a dive to avoid a half formed fireball. Zhao was standing on the sand, staring at their retreating form.

Zuko watched him become nothing along the horizon line. 

Ty Lee was still fighting. “Sit still,” Azula hissed, wrenching her tighter. 

“What’s going on?” Zuko asked, frowning at both of them.

“You just left them behind!” Ty Lee cried, tears brimming in her eyes. “You left them behind to die!”

Zuko sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “They’ll be fine,” he snapped. “Half of the soldiers are dead, and they’ll be retreating. The Kyoshi Warriors can handle themselves.”

“Their village is burned to the ground,” Ty Lee said, her lower lip jutting out. “How will they live? Who’s to say those soldiers won’t come back and take revenge?”

Zuko turned his head. “They’ll rebuild,” he said, stubbornly. “Besides, Zhao is chasing us. He won’t be interested in Kyoshi Island anymore with us gone.”

“So it’s our fault.”

Ty Lee was staring him down, eyes wide and soft gray brown. Zuko shifted uncomfortably. “He is,” he answered simply. “Zhao caught on quicker than I thought.” He smiled bitterly. “We ran out of time. We can’t afford to stop anymore.”

“We need to  _ help  _ them,” Ty Lee reiterated, staunch and unrelenting. Zuko felt a smile twitch at his lips at her determination—they had been taught that Air Nomads were soft and weak and cowards, but Ty Lee had as little control of her emotions as a firebender. 

“You can’t save everyone,” Zuko responded. Azula was sitting back now, legs and arms crossed, watching the two of them disdainfully. 

“Does that mean we shouldn’t even  _ try _ ?” Ty Lee asked, the anger dying out on her tongue. Zuko could see the fight slowly drain from her as the words floated through the air, heard but unanswered.

He wetted his lips, tasting blood on his tongue. His injuries felt like old friends on his body, aching in tune with his heartbeat and the pounding in his skull. 

Ty Lee let out a small laugh as both of them said nothing. “I’m the Avatar,” she said, finally. “My destiny is to save the world and end the Fire Lord. But defeating the Fire Nation and killing the Fire Lord won’t solve the problem! You have to help the people if you want to do that. What’s the use of killing a powerful man if the...the Air Nomads are all still dead and the waterbenders are almost all gone and the world is still  _ starving and dying and— _ ”

“Stop,” Azula said, her voice sounding almost pleasant. Ty Lee stopped, the words cut off abruptly, struggling to breathe. 

“What,” she said, anger leaking back into her voice.

Azula examined her fingernails. “The dead are dead,” she said. “The starving will starve, the benders will bend, Sozin’s Comet will come and go.” When she looked up, the setting sun had cast light clouds across her dark gold eyes. “The question is,” she said. “What you’ll choose to do about it.”

Zuko smiled to himself. His little sister had grown up in the most unexpected way—she defied their father and their mother; she was not kind; she was cruel, but she was not brutal. She spoke well, but as bluntly as possible. 

“You can’t fix the world if you don’t start by fixing the people,” Ty Lee said, softly.

“Let’s start with taking out the problem first, then,” Zuko cut in. He picked up Ty Lee’s glider and tossed it to her. She caught it lightly, examining the wood for any fractures or dents.

“Avatar Kyoshi spoke to me,” she added offhandedly. “She told me to go to Roku’s Island. That I would find answers there.”

Zuko’s heart sunk. He was sure it had found a permanent place around his knees at this point. 

He laughed, drily. “That’s not a detour we can afford.”

“It’s not one we can avoid,” Ty Lee challenged.

Azula laughed, high and shrill in the air. It shattered the tense peace. “A little too close to home for comfort, Zuzu? This will be fun.”

Zuko sighed and said nothing more, turning to gaze out across the sky instead of look at the laughter still hiding behind his sister’s smile, the pensive frown on Ty Lee’s face as she considered her hands. He would be entering Fire Nation territory for the first time in three years; this time as no longer a banished prince, but a treacherous one. 

The setting sun spilled red across the horizon, like an omen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!! I'm writing again, but I can't promise when the next chapter will be done - hopefully sometime next week, though. 
> 
> My tumble is astarlightmonbebe if anyone wants to hmu (it's not an atla one, but hey I'm cool). Feed your local author by leaving a kudo or comment, thanks!


	4. 四

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for 1k hits, 100 kudos, and 50+ subs :,,,)! Sorry this took longer than I expected to put out...July is kind of unexpectedly busy for me?? Anyways, this is a pretty long chap for compensation, though it feels a bit redundant...hey, we finally get an Azula pov though! I tried to combine Sun Warriors and Roku's Island...it's kind of disastrous, but who cares.
> 
> The only warnings for this chapter are implied child abuse, and that's very light!

Roku’s Island was a red rock, the sand dusty beneath their feet. Azula hopped down and looked at the grains with distaste, watching how the color stuck to her boots, glittering red on the black metal. She inhaled through her nostrils, the urge to simply light herself on fire and burn off the filth momentarily overcoming her, but that would worry Zuzu, so she didn’t.

However, she did pluck the bison’s disgusting fur from her, hair by hair, and burn it all to ash. 

Zuko breathed out. He was pale and had an unsettled disposition, but Azula couldn’t tell if that was because of where they were or the injuries he was trying, and failing, to hide from them. Maybe Ty Lee hadn’t noticed, but Azula was used to her brother trying to keep secrets from her. He always cracked, in the end, even if he had always been good at enduring the pain until it broke him.

And it  _ had  _ broken him, but no one but Azula could probably tell just by looking at her brother. 

That was fine, too. Broken toys were more fun to play with, anyways. 

“It’s hot,” Ty Lee said plaintively, the heat rippling in waves. Azula was cold inside, but the fire made her skin burn almost lovingly. She could feel her power here, deep in the earth and the now dormant again volcano. 

“Where to?” Zuko asked, hands fidgeting on the handles of his stupid swords.

Ty Lee pointed, finger hovering in the air before resting on the peak of the volcano, a swirl of reddish black ash and cracked stone. Zuko looked at it with apprehension, while Azula looked at it and imagined how tedious this was going to be.

She started forward without waiting for the two of them, sighing at the clouds of ash and dust that rose as she left a trail of footprints across the reddish gray sand. She would have to clean her boots later, but she doubted the sky bison came with acceptable shoe polish. Just another thing this whole adventure lacked, really. Why had she agreed to it?

Oh, right. Zuzu and his stupid persuasion skills, assuming she wanted to lead a nation more than she wanted to follow him.

Not that he was wrong. Being the Fire Lord  _ was  _ pretty appealing, but making sure her brother didn’t get himself killed was more important. 

It was sad, really. Zuko could hardly survive without her.

There were indents in the cliffside, Azula noted as they started the silent climb up. As if a staircase had been made out of the stone, a shapeless rock formation made for climbing. That was strange—no one visited Roku’s Island, not since Great Grandfather Sozin has declared him a traitor to the Fire Nation upon his death.

“Is it getting hotter?” Ty Lee asked, fanning herself with a breeze that swept through their ranks, her glider spinning in her hand. “It feels like it’s getting hotter.”

It was definitely getting hotter. Azula could feel it starting to seep between the cracks in her armor, sweat beading on her forehead. That was unusual; heat didn’t bother her, and no amount of heat could match the temperature of her fire anyways. Zuko was panting next to her, sweat causing the few strands of hair that had escaped his topknot to cling to his face. Waves rose from the cracked ground, making everything blurry and out of depth and focus. Azula looked at her feet and frowned when they seemed to sway beneath her, the sun reflecting sharply off the metal and into her eyes.

“Lala.” Zuko was at her side in an instant, hand at her arm, and Azula realized she had started to fall. She quickly shook him off, pushing hair and mirages out of her eyes and looking straight ahead, where Ty Lee was trudging onwards tiredly.

“Who could ever live here?” she grumbled, moving forward before he could be  _ concerned _ , or anything like that. She hated when he acted like the older brother. Maybe he had been born first, but both of them knew Azula was much more capable when it came to looking after herself.

“It’s been years since anyone has,” Zuko answered, slipping on a rock and nearly skidding off the side of the rocky slope. Sand and ash sprayed up around his feet, and he coughed, spitting out grit. He looked up. “Let’s get over this ridge, and if there’s nothing there, we’ll go, okay?” 

“Whatever,” Azula said. It wasn’t like sitting on the shedding sky bison would be any better. 

“I’ll let Ty Lee know,” her brother said, moving past her more sure footedly. Azula watched him catch up to the Avatar and murmur to her, the other girl frowning and saying something back. Zuko gestured to the sun—probably something about the time—and Ty Lee responded quietly, eventually nodding. Zuko fell back a few paces after that, but Azula noticed he didn’t fully rejoin her. At least he wasn’t talking to Ty Lee. Azula was gracious, but she detested sharing.

The way up got steeper as they approached the ledge, almost completely vertical, so that Azula was tempted to use her fire boosters and just clear it, if only to get this tedious ‘adventure’ over with. However, Ty Lee was assisting them with air as Zuko attempted to rock climb with only one working arm, as if his wrist hadn’t at least fractured in several places. They would need more medicine for it—she was sure she could find a place and rob someone well meaning merchant of their herbs, as long as she could get away from the other two. Zuko would ask questions later, but she could just ignore it.

Pulling herself up hand over hand, Azula weighed the pros and cons of doing so in her mind. She wasn’t keeping track of directions—Zuko had the map, while she kept track of the days, Agni’s flame helping her—so she didn’t know when the next town would be. And it didn’t look like Roku’s Island had any plants on it that would be helpful. Maybe they had all burned down when the volcano had erupted.

She tried to imagine what that would feel like, a volcano erupting. She thought it would be so overwhelmingly powerful it would be hard to breathe. Maybe like Sozin’s Comet, but this wouldn’t make her flame stronger, it would only give her a source to use.

Which would be more powerful, controlling a volcano or being super powered by a comet?

Well, controlling a volcano would mean controlling the lava, which wasn’t  _ exactly  _ the same as fire, but it was related. If she could do  _ that _ , wouldn’t she be the most powerful firebender in the world?

The thought was nice. Azula wanted it to be true.

There was a cry from above her, and a moment later rocks scattered down in a landslide, Azula only just managing to break away with a hiss of fury, her rocket boosters flaring to life. Propelling herself forward, she rolled across the top of the cliff, landing on a foot and a knee, whipping around to glare at her sheepish brother, who was rolling out his wrist with a grimace and a look of concern as he tracked her movement.

“Sorry about that,” Ty Lee said breathlessly, the funnel of wind she had used to save herself dissipating into the air nearby. “The top was crumbly.”

Azula peered over the edge and saw their way up had been totally destroyed. Unfortunate, but they had an airbender at their use, so maybe they could make something of it. “Great job,” she said. “How lucky that we can all just  _ fly _ our way down when we’re done.”

She was met with silence, which was unusual. Turning, she saw her brother had gone ashen pale, staring straight at her with terror in his eyes. Terror, and something else. Awe? 

And he wasn’t looking at her, Azula realized as she felt hot air waft across her neck. He was looking at something  _ behind  _ her.

She pivoted, as slowly as possible, summoning flames to her fingertips, where they burned oil and waited, ready to be thrown at the next second. 

A dragon was staring at her.

Azula wavered, staring at the large eyes in front of her, the face that looked like it had been carved from one of Zuko’s theatre masks, red and hard, lined with scales. The body was long and sinewy, snaking around the plateau and curled around...around the tail of  _ another  _ dragon.

But that was impossible. All the dragons were dead. Her great grandfather had killed them, and the last one had been destroyed by her sad excuse of an uncle.

Yet here one was, staring her down, able to kill her faster than she knew she could dodge.

And there wasn’t just one of them, she noticed, carefully looking around. Another had curled around Ty Lee, who was standing perfectly still, her eyes wide with awe and a gleeful expression on her face as she ran a hand over the scales.

“I think...I think it’s testing you,” Zuko whispered. “Don’t hurt it.”

Azula scoffed. “As if a dragon would scare me,” she said, and the dragon responded by exhaling fire all over her. It hardly caused even a singe, but she still frowned in annoyance, brushing off the last of the flames. 

The dragons spun away, twisting in circles. Azula slowly rose to her feet, her legs shaking minutely beneath her. 

“Look,” Zuko said, pointing down. Azula tilted her head downwards and saw that there were faint markings on the ground, which had once been some sort of platform. Orange and yellow flames curved around in bursts of sunlight and fire, faded paint on the dusty clay. 

“What about it?” she asked, but Zuko was already kneeling and tracing the patterns with awe split across his face.

“I read about these,” he said, voice rising with increased excitement, a childlike awe spreading across his face. “It was in the Forbidden Library, but I stole some scrolls from there when I was younger, and these markings are  _ exactly  _ like they are in the book.”

“So what are they?” Ty Lee asked, turning her back on the dragons. That was dangerous. She was naive. Too trusting. Azula could practically stab her in the back whenever she wanted to. 

“Ancient designs by the Sun Warriors, who were presumed to be the first firebenders,” Zuko breathed, looking at images with reverence. “If you look closely enough, the patterns follow the bending forms—see how this one goes like this? That’s one of the most basic katas, I think Lala taught you that one, Ty Lee…”

Azula tuned him out, turning to watch the dragons as they circled higher and higher in their plunging, twisting...dance? It  _ was  _ a dance, Azula realized, watching them with a more observant eye. Like how Zuzu moved when he used his swords—a fluid use of muscles and motions that did not quite equate to the brutal musical way of bending. They wove, blue and red blurs against the high sun and red sand. Azula watched them eclipse the sun, turn, and hurtle back down.

Moving swiftly, she only just managed to yank her brother out of the way bodily, snarling as he narrowly missed getting checked by a scaled dragon, the stream of gibberish that he had been going on about finally being abruptly cut off in surprise and shock as they both nearly rolled off the cliffside.

“Agni, will you  _ watch  _ yourself?” Azula snapped. “Or next time I’ll let you get burned alive.”

“Pretty sure you said that last time,” her brother mumbled as he pushed himself up, awkward around his injured wrist. Azula realized she had grabbed it to pull him out of the way, and a pang of...something went through her. 

The dragons were waiting for them, curling around the edges of the plateau and preventing them from escaping. A net. They hovered, silently, and Azula could feel them  _ looking _ , which made her uneasy. She  _ hated  _ feeling uneasy. Who said she couldn’t tame a dragon, she thought as she stared back at them stubbornly.

“I think they’re waiting for us to do something,” Ty Lee said, carefully setting her staff on the ground at her feet. “I think...I think we’re supposed to dance.”

“Dance?” Zuko echoed. 

“Wasn’t that what all bending started out as? Dancing with an element?” 

Azula frowned. “It’s insulting to compare something as great as bending to a cheap art form.”

“Dancing isn’t cheap.” Zuzu was looking at her with that  _ disappointed  _ look in his eyes he always got when Azula was right about something.

Ty Lee cleared her throat, tugging at her braids nervously. “There’s two dragons, and two sets, so I think it’s for Azula and I, because we’re benders. Sorry, Zuko,” she said, fidgeting.

“It’s fine,” Zuko said, shuffling back a step.

Azula stepped forward. “Do I have to?” she asked.

Behind her, Zuko snorted. “ _ You  _ never  _ have  _ to do anything,” he told her. 

Azula smiled. He was right, of course. Zuzu always knew his place well. He hadn’t as much, when they were kids, but he had learned.

Even if it should have been Azula who had taught him, not their father. 

Zuko stepped back, again, away from the center, but the dragons moved, blocking him from going further back, huffing smoke from their nostrils that enveloped him in a mix of steam and mist. Zuko froze, looking back at them hesitantly. Azula regarded them with interest.

“I think...they want you to dance, too,” Ty Lee said, cautiously. 

Zuko looked at her cautiously, as if he couldn’t dare to believe it. He tried to step back, again, but the dragons pushed him  _ forward  _ instead, their shadows blotting out the sun and casting dark shadows across her brother’s form, who suddenly seemed so small in comparison to, and they spoke.

Well, it was not really speaking. It was more a voice in their head, that twisted and reminded her too much of  _ other  _ voices that wouldn’t leave her be, except these voices did not belong to a being, but rather a disembodiment.

_ All children born under Agni’s light are His children, whether they were blessed with fire or not. You  _ will  _ learn, son of Agni. _

Zuko was trembling, his eyes wide as the dragon’s both looked at him, their eyes glowing with the fire that surely lit up their insides. Slowly, hesitantly, he bowed to both of them, and they flicked their sinewy bodies, wrapped back around the edges of the plateau as Zuko stepped forward into the center of the stage, to the third set of designs that had gone unnoticed to Azula’s eyes.

Ty Lee moved to her side, finding the beginning, and Azula followed suit disinterestedly, examining the designs with disdain. It was a surprise they hadn’t worn away.

Behind her, the red dragon moved with a huff of steam, the blue one next to Ty Lee uncurling it’s tail from it’s partner’s. Azula was highly aware of how large the dragon was, it’s body as wide as her, maybe more so. A single flick could probably kill her—she could fight fire with fire, maybe, but not contend with the strength of a dragon.

But Zuko would probably kill it if he thought it was going to hurt her. Her brother might be a soft hearted sentimentalist who loved stories too much, like their failure of an uncle, but he had to love her more than even a creature of myth. 

A small part of her doubted it, the voice that sounded like her mother,  _ who would never leave her alone _ , whispering that her brother feared her, but he didn’t  _ love  _ her.

_ You didn’t love me either,  _ Azula wanted to scream.  _ You thought I was a monster!  _

Did Zuko think she was a monster? Sometimes, Azula couldn’t tell. Her brother was too  _ human  _ for something like that, hatred.

The dragons twisted in the air and Azula and Ty Lee began to dance, Zuko drawing his swords and slipped into a perfect form as he started to move in tandem with her. Azula’s inner fire curled and stretched like water lapping at a sandy shore, moving through her veins and her blood, singing a pretty song of terror and destruction as it entreated her fingers to let it flow free.

They swept towards the sky and Azula let it jet stream out, tongues of orange turning electric white highlighting the deep blue of the cloudless sky above them. The dragons moved and they followed suit; it felt like some abstract sort of bending, this ‘dance.’ Like Azula had become fire herself, her bones burning up with the insatiable hunger stored in her core. 

Across from her, Ty Lee mirrored her actions, sweat beading her forehead as she kept up. Her fire was a dark yellow, almost as gold as Zuko’s eyes, flickering orange as it faded out. Azula kicked higher, body a fluid and oiled machine, and let the blue of her hottest fire leap free as the dragons exhumed tongues that could engulf her in a minute. She could feel the heat rippling from their every pore. It was heat a human should be unable to survive, but Azula was a firebender, and she thrived beneath it, using it to make her flames burn hotter than they ever had before.

This was the heart of fire. This was how bending had felt before it had been transformed into a weapon. This wildly exhilarating freedom and beauty created by the Sun Warriors had been just that—beautiful. Beautiful and untameable. A blessing gifted by Agni to only the most worthy, and she was  _ worthy _ .

They slid into the last form and Azula let every part of her body release the fire that burned inside. It fountained from her mouth, her hands, her feet, in waves of rainbow colored fire, swirling around them as the dragons curled tighter and Azula had no choice but to look  _ up. _

It was only them and the fire and the fading dragons, a cyclone of rainbow and burning that felt like comfort wrapped around her, her mother’s hand on her forehead when she had been younger and more innocent. She felt unlike ever before, as if the thing swarming inside of her had gone away for a moment and left her with only peace between her ribs, hot and relaxing.

This was not the fire she had learned from the masters she had long since beaten. This was not the fire that had razed the air temples and would do the same to the Earth Kingdom. This was not the fire that roared in the Caldera, that leapt before her father’s throne, burning endlessly. This was not the fire they, the Fire Nation, brought with them wherever they went. This was not the fire that Azula carried tightly in her chest.

This was a fire of life, not destruction. Had she learned it wrong this whole time? It was not a small thing to consider. She was  _ never  _ wrong.

But here were the first fires and they were not blue, like how hot her own burned, or orange or yellow. They were simply every color there was to be, for fire lived and breathed through the air, as intricate as oxygen itself. Fire and Air had first been complementary elements before they had become counterparts. Was this why her great grandfather had wiped out the Nomads? Had he, too, understood how the two elements relied on one another?

The fire died out, and when Azula’s vision cleared, she saw the dragons had seemingly fallen into a deep slumber, twined together like yin and yang. The beginning and the end.

Ty Lee was standing stock still, staring out blankly. Azula looked back to see Zuko gripping the hilts of his swords uncertainly, untouched but looking shaken, still. There was a fervor in his eyes that had not been there before, and she wondered what the dance had meant to him that it had not to her; he looked like he had been in the presence of a god, but that was wrong, because the only god Zuko had ever served had been their father, and he had  _ broken  _ him.

_ Look after your sister,  _ their mother had told him, but that hadn’t worked, because Azula had to look after  _ him  _ instead. Because, for some reason, Zuko had been the oldest but not the strongest, and Azula was left with the slack of the rope he had left to unravel, and so she carried  _ both  _ their weight, because she was the  _ best, she had to be for both of them _ — 

Ty Lee stumbled, once, then fell to her knees. Zuko started forward, but Azula wrenched him back as Ty Lee tipped her head back and let out a jet of fire, her eyes filled out in silver as her form went still and emitted a soft, silvery aura that outlined her. She looked frozen in time.

“I guess she finally connected with Roku,” Zuko mumbled. He sighed and slid down to the ground, leaning back comfortably against one of the dragons. Azula eyed him for a long moment, then followed suit.

“You know,” he started. “I think these are Sozin and Roku’s dragons.”

Azula laughed. “What on earth makes you think  _ that _ ?”

Zuko shrugged. “It’s just that...no one knows what happened to them. Roku’s dragon stayed with Roku when the volcano erupted, and Sozin’s vanished as well. It would make sense for them to be here.”

“That happened a century ago,” Azula replied.

Zuko shrugged. “It’s not that hard to believe.”

“Why would they be together anyways?” she asked. “Sozin and Roku were enemies.”

“Not always,” Zuko muttered. “They grew up together, like brothers.”

“How many scrolls did you read from the Forbidden Library?” Azula asked, narrowing her eyes. Zuko looked away guiltily, smiling. Azula sighed and shook her head.

They sat in silence and waited.

* * *

Ty Lee was in the sky, walking on air, with blue stretching out as far as one could see in either direction. She could feel the vestiges of consciousness and space at the edges of her mind, but she ignored them, looking around instead. What she thought was Roku’s Island sloped into the ocean far below her, but it was not the red sand dune and blackened volcano ash she had been on earlier, but a land thriving with green and homes. 

Wind gusted above her, and when Ty Lee looked up, she saw a red speck in the sun coming down towards her. It revealed the dragon Azula had danced with earlier and, on its back, a man she recognized immediately as Roku, the avatar that had come before her. He was an old man, with white hair and red robes.

Ty Lee stepped back as he came level with her, holding out his hand. Taking the clue, she slipped onto the back of the dragon, marveling at how strange and fascinating it was to sit on such a magnificent creature.

The dragon moved and she let out a gasp of surprise as they soared into the air, no longer stationary. She could feel the wind buffering her and keeping her on as it pulled at her clothes, as they wove through the air faster than any sky bison could. Riding Moshi was security, but riding a dragon felt like freedom. The impossible. This could hardly be real—dancing with a dragon was one thing, but riding another felt like a dream come to life. One of her Fire Nation friends had told her stories of the dragons with woeful voices, how so few were left in the world, when there had used to be enough that most firebenders were connected to one, like the airbenders with their sky bison.

They set down on the platform she had been dancing on only moments earlier, where her body surely was poised in reality. Ty Lee slid off the dragon lightly, running a hand along the scales in awe and wonder as Roku dismounted.

“My mentor sent you here,” Roku said, a hand resting on the dragon. It took Ty Lee a moment to realize he meant Kyoshi; she nodded.

“She told me I would find answers here,” Ty Lee said hesitantly. “About...my destiny. And Zuko and Azula’s.”

“Ah, yes,” Roku said, his bearded mouth twitching upwards in a smile. “My great-grandchildren.”

“Your what?” Ty Lee asked.

“My great-grandchildren,” Roku repeated. “Their mother, Ursa, was my granddaughter. Azulon chose her to marry Ozai with the hope the joining of two great bloodlines would have remarkable results. And perhaps he was right—they are quite extraordinary, aren’t they?”

Ty Lee smiled, thinking of Zuko’s swords and Azula’s burning hot fire. “They are,” she agreed. “Azula is a very good firebending teacher.”

“Hmph!” Roku said. “She’s talented, but mannerless.” His eyes were fond around the edges, where they crinkled, though, and Ty Lee knew he loved them.

“Is it really destiny?” she asked. “Me defeating the Fire Lord.”

Roku looked at her. “Of course,” he finally said. “I only wish I had done it when it was my time, so you would not have had to do it in yours.”

“Can you...can you see the future?” Ty Lee questioned, leaning back against the resting dragon. “Do you know what’s going to happen?”

“No, child,” Roku answered. “I can only tell you that it has been written in fate for centuries that the Avatar  _ must  _ be the one to defeat the Fire Lord before Sozin’s Comet comes and Ozai can destroy more of this world than he already has.”

“Why couldn’t you stop him?” Ty Lee asked, aware she sounded petulant, but the question burned on her tongue all the same. “Why couldn’t the spirits  _ do  _ anything?”

Roku looked sad as he gazed at her. “You are the bridge between the spirit world and this one,” he said. “And you weren’t here.”

The words hit her like a staggering weight; Ty Lee was surprised to find she had not really been knocked back when her head cleared only seconds later, the words hanging above her and twining around her ears, echoed back and forth in the basins of the bones of her skull. 

_ You weren’t here.  _

Maybe her great ‘destiny’ was punishment. Punishment for not saving them before this. Punishment for allowing her people to be massacred. Punishment for allowing the desecration of sacred waters and temples. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, feeling tears leaking from her eyes. 

“It is not all your fault,” Roku said. “You are a child, still. When I was your age, I didn’t even know I  _ was  _ the Avatar. I could only firebend, and even then, Sozin was much better than me.” He sighed, his expression wistful. “We do not choose our destinies.”

_ But it is yours to bear _ , Ty Lee heard in the silence that followed the words. How she wished it could be a lie. 

“The dragons,” she started. She was unsure of what to say, so she settled on a simple, “How?”

“Ah,” Roku said, a smile broadening his features. “The Sun Warriors.” The shock must have been clear on Ty Lee’s face, because he explained, “There was once a people dedicated to preserving the secrets of the dance you saw, which is considered true enlightenment for all those who wield fire as their element, who were also called the Sun Warriors—that is what Zuko told you about. But, as airbenders learn from the sky bison, the first firebenders learned from the dragons, who were the original Sun Warriors. All bending came first from the creatures, you see, and there was a time when dragons taught  _ all  _ firebenders, but as you know, the dragons—” He hesitated. “The dragons have been gone now, for a long time. Sozin and my own were one of the last, and now they protect the secrets of the Sun Warriors, and they will until they die.”

“So those were your dragons?” Ty Lee remarked. “And Sozin’s?”

Roku nodded. “They have been waiting there for over a century. Mine stayed when I died, and Sozin’s returned when he passed on to the next life.”

“Why?” Ty Lee asked. “Because you and Sozin were friends?”

“Who can know how a dragon thinks, young Avatar?” Roku asked with a genial smile. “They are beings above us all.”

Ty Lee was quiet, looking at the sleeping dragon who was still much larger of life, even in this lifelike dream, and contemplated it. She had never considered Moshi to be above her—they were equals, or as much as they could be due to the difference in species. They existed together, in tandem. A sky bison and a dragon might be alike in theory, but she was beginning to understand they were two very different things. Perhaps it stemmed from differences in culture—she knew that Air Nomads had always been considered unconventional due to their denial of material things and the spiritual way of living they embraced, with which came equality in almost all forms, as well as a higher form of intelligence and connection to the Spirit World and their own inner spirituality. The Fire Nation had, perhaps, the most opposite culture from their own—they featured a rigid hierarchical structure with the royals at the top, separated physically and mentally in almost all aspects. There was no ‘fairness’ in the Fire Nation; if you wanted something, you had to  _ earn  _ it. A concept Ty Lee understood in theory, but not when it played out. To her, and to her people, everyone simply  _ deserved  _ as much as everyone else simply because they  _ existed _ . 

Still, the Fire Nation valued honor and loyalty, not spirituality. They were a godly people, but they worshipped Agni, while the airbenders attempted to understand the spirits. The Air Nomads understood that the spirits were greater than them, but also that they could coexist peacefully. Firebenders bowed to the sun and called it something greater than themselves.

But then again, Ty Lee’s understanding of Fire Nation culture was about a century outdated, and it wasn’t like she had really ever  _ been  _ to the Fire Nation. Everything she knew was from secondhand sources, from the school girls she had befriended and the words passed on by her sisters, who had always been allowed more freedom to travel.

They had been allowed so much more freedom than she had ever been, but they weren’t the Avatar. They could afford to be reckless. 

And Ty Lee?

The one time she had been reckless, she hadn’t been there to save her people, and the whole  _ world  _ had suffered because of it.

But not anymore. She couldn’t change her destiny, and there was no use in attempting to fight it. She couldn’t be the same girl who had run away from home because she was  _ angry _ . She had to be stronger than that. Emotion was a gift, but one she had to treat right. She couldn’t let it rule her. She couldn’t let it force her to run again. 

The world depended on her. She couldn’t let it down a second time. 

She was the  _ Avatar  _ after all.

“The sun sets and my time grows short,” Roku said, rising to his feet. Ty Lee blinked and realized the sun was indeed setting. How long had she been sitting there, a hand resting on the dragon’s scales, lost in her thoughts?

She flushed and quickly rose to her feet, bowing deeply to him. He was, after all, her predecessor, the most direct one. She was sure to have much to learn from him in the future.

“I’m sure Kyoshi sent you to me so that I could help you reach a decision,” Roku said. “But it seems you have done that all on your own.”

Ty Lee ducked her chin. “I’m going to give it my all,” she said, attempting to channel the determination that had just been in her thoughts.

“Oh, I’m sure you will,” Roku said. “You will kill the Fire Lord, Ty Lee, and bring this world the peace it has been waiting for over a century for.”

_ Kill _ . Ty Lee swallowed. “Do I have to kill him?” she asked. “Is there no other way?”

“In war, there is often not,” Roku answered. 

“That’s not an answer,” Ty Lee said.

“Then how about this,” Roku continued. “Do you doubt your destiny because of your heart, or because of your fear?”

“Can’t it be both?” 

Roku’s lips twitched. “I advise that you reflect on that yourself, child. It is a hard choice, but it is a necessary one.”

Ty Lee swallowed back her doubt and nodded. She had more than three months to learn how to kill. She would be ready for it; she  _ had  _ to be.

_ You  _ have  _ to be many things _ , a voice that sounded like her mother whispered in her ear, her sister’s voices bleeding into the words.  _ But are all those things  _ you? An Air Nomad proverb. One her mother had told her whenever Ty Lee had gotten upset at one of her sisters and complained about it. It had been her mother’s way of telling her she could be herself and part of a set. Ty Lee had never liked it; she had never wanted to be a  _ part  _ of her sisters, not really. She had wanted to be her own person; they all had. 

_ I’m myself _ , she told herself.  _ And I am the Avatar. _

Maybe those two were not mutually exclusive. Maybe they were. It did not change the fact that she was Ty Lee, the last airbender, the Avatar.  _ I have no time to be young _ , she had told Kyoshi, and it was true. The time to be a child had passed. The time to be the legend she was destined to become had arrived.

“Are you ready to return?” Roku asked her.

Ty Lee raised her chin. “Yes,” she said. “I think I’ve thought enough.”

* * *

Ty Lee surged back to reality like a drowning person, gasping for air as she broke the surface and the Spirit World lost its hold on her, the silver fading out like the sunlight streaked into the horizon line. Zuko jerked forward from where he had been beginning to zone out, the warmth behind him lulling him into a sense of false security.

She turned to face them immediately, surging to her feet and grabbing her staff.

“Did you learn anything important?” Zuko asked worriedly, the look in her eyes fever bright. 

“Roku is your great grandfather,” Ty Lee announced.

Azula’s eyes opened slowly besides Zuko. He could see that her spine had gone rigid. “ _ What  _ did you just say?” she asked incredulously, scoffing the words across her tongue.

Ty Lee hesitated. “ _ Avatar  _ Roku,” she said, as if that was the part they had gotten tripped up on.

“That’s impossible,” Zuko told her, as gently as possible. “Roku...our great grandfather was  _ Sozin _ .”

“He said Ursa was his granddaughter,” Ty Lee replied. “She was...your mother, wasn’t she?”

The words felt like a slap across the face, as if Zuko had plunged into the frigid depths of the Southern Sea all over again and was losing the fight to breathe. 

“Was,” he said, voice hollow, ears ringing.

“Is,” Azula corrected. “That bitch probably isn’t dead yet.” Her eyes were dark and her face twisted at the mention of their mother, at the mention of  _ Ursa _ . Zuko hissed, sharply between his teeth, at her in warning to never talk about their mother that way again, but Azula was gazing at Ty Lee hard and unforgiving. 

“She’s dead,” Zuko told her, but Azula shook her head.

“She’ll never be truly gone,” she muttered, lips twisting. “Not if we’re alive.” Zuko didn’t know what she meant by that, but he was too distracted with the weight of the legacy that had been handed to them to ask.

Sozin and Roku were two opposing forces. Everyone knew they had died hating each other to their last breaths; Zuko had read his great grandfather’s records of how he had left the man who had been his friend to burn alive in the spilling waterfalls of molten lava. 

Sozin and Roku had gone against everything the other had stood for. How could Zuko—Zuko  _ and  _ Azula—come from both bloodlines? How could their blood sing the songs of two different types of violent existences? It was impossible. It was a contradiction he could not face without feeling the walls further collapse inwards on him.

But fire had been made not to destroy, but to live, to dance and sing as surely as water and air and earth; the dragons had taught him that, had made him realize how much more he could be, how moving with swords was like playing with fire, his dao an extension of his arms, an extension of his body, his blood.

Had Sozin been wrong the whole time?

_ You are to be banished, as befitting of a traitor _ , his father whispered in his mind, as if he could read Zuko’s thoughts.

“You’re lying,” Azula was saying, calm as could be, as if there was no other logical explanation. She laughed, something guttural carved out of her tongue and smile. “Though I suppose it would make sense. Our dearest mother always tried to undermine our father in every way possible. She was always a traitor, it’s no wonder she would be of  _ Roku’s  _ bloodline.”

Zuko was silent. Their mother had never seemed treacherous to him. She had been strong, as strong as he thought any mother should be when it came to their children. She had survived being married to their father for years. 

When Zuko thought of their mother, he remembered her lips brushing his forehead as lightly as a ghost’s, how she had said  _ never forget who you are.  _ He knew she had killed Azulon, their grandfather, for him. He knew it would have been treason then, but no longer when his father took the throne. Killing a Fire Lord was treason, but not when a new Fire Lord reigned, in a place he had always been destined to be.

“Roku said our destinies are intertwined,” Ty Lee continued, her expression thoughtful. She smiled, lightly. “I guess I am technically your great grandfather.”

“No, please,” Zuko said, closing his eyes briefly. He was in enough of a mind spiral; he didn’t need that added reminder.

“Why? It’s—” she trailed off abruptly, eyes sliding out of focus and zeroing in on something past their heads. Zuko watched her for a second too long, brow furrowing in confusion as he watched her eyebrows draw together and her lips part slightly. 

He realized, too late, that he should have turned around first, because Azula surged to her feet and slammed her hands out, parting the wave of fire that had come coalesced towards them. The dragons took to the sky like startled birds, disappearing into the air in thin wisps of smoke, their work done for the day, apparently, though Zuko was sure they could easily demolish the fleet that had appeared at the red edges of Roku’s Island. 

However, he knew if Zhao discovered them, there would no longer be a peaceful existence. They would be hunted, his father informed. No dragons lived under Ozai’s reign; to know two had would be a failure to him. 

Zuko drew his swords and slid behind his sister, prepared to break any heat that slipped past her fingers. 

“How did he get here?” Ty Lee yelled, her staff spinning in her hands like a compass unfocused, searching wildly for true north.

Zuko only shook his head, unable to form a word. He was surprised, more surprised than he should be, which settled uncomfortably in his boots like an added weight. He had to be more attentive; he was losing the discipline he had pounded rigidly into his spine back on the Wani, becoming used to being around people he didn’t necessarily have to keep an appearance up in front of.

How had Zhao tracked them? Zuko had never been able to figure it out, but he was used to Zhao chasing them around half the world, even if he wasn’t usually  _ this  _ fast.

Ty Lee whistled, sharply into the air, and Zuko saw a speck of white take to the sky far below. Zhao’s ship was preparing again, the metal glinting in the sun even though the soldiers were far away against the wave beaten rocks. Soon, a wave of fireballs would be upon them, and he didn’t know if even Azula and Ty Lee together could block them all. Ty Lee had just broken Avatar State—they couldn’t risk her reentering it, not when Zuko could tell her control was fragile and based entirely upon her emotions and the presences of the other Avatars, who had pulled her in with their own free will. 

Moshi landed with a thump. 

“Get on, Zuzu,” Azula ordered sharply, her hands still in a fighting stance. 

“You get on first,” he said, shaking his head.

“Zuko,” Azula said, her voice flat. “Last time I checked, you burned easy enough.” She was looking straight at his scar as she said it, and Zuko felt something small and insecure rise up in his throat. 

“How about we all get on?” Ty Lee asked brightly, looping her elbows through both of their arms and sending them, all up with a bender powered gust of wind. “Yip yip!” she cried, diving across Moshi’s back and snapping the reins. They took off, but Zhao’s ships were already prepared, and fire was raining down on them, hurtling forward like fallen meteors.

A preview for Sozin’s show, Zuko thought bitterly.

“Hold on!” Ty Lee yelled, and Zuko was nearly falling in the next moment, his hands finding the saddle and clinging on as his body went nearly vertical, Moshi turning into a series of tight dives and rolls to avoid the fire. Azula cursed like a sailor, punching away any that came too close, her feet hooked into the sides of the saddle with an amazing steadiness. A stray fireball singed Zuko’s feet.

Then they were slamming back into the saddle, his swords digging into his back painfully, and Zuko was staring up at the blue sky, gasping for breath and watching the clouds pass above them.

“We need to get him off our trail,” he managed to say, though he was sure he had spoken to himself, the words falling into the emptiness above him.

“Good luck with that,” Azula observed drily, rearranging her hair expertly. 

“Yeah,” Zuko said, closing his eyes and silently counting off days on his fingers as he calculated the pace they were moving and the weeks they had left. “We’re kind of screwed.”

“Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to say we can make it?” Azula chided.

Zuko smiled. “That’s what Ty Lee is for, now.”

“What?” Ty Lee called back, but Zuko and Azula both deigned not to respond, sharing a private smile. When Zuko sat up, Ty Lee was looking at them with glittering eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Ty Lee said. “It just...reminded me of what it was like to have siblings, that’s all.” She turned away, quickly, but Zuko could tell she was about to cry.

“You’re not alone,” he said, slowly, unsure of how to comfort her. 

“I know,” she said, her back to them. “But once a set, always a set, you know?”

Zuko didn’t. He and Azula had never been a set, let alone a pair. He had never had a friend. The only person who had been close to that was Lu Ten, and even he had been more of a distant older brother. 

He looked at Ty Lee now, burdened with six sisters she would never see again, and his own sister, who had never been an ordinary younger sister. He was struck with the sudden urge to pull Azula close to him and hug her tight, remind her of the warmth that came with another person, but he didn’t, because they weren’t that type of family. 

But Zuko wanted to. Oh, he wanted to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Don't forget to feed your local ao3 author by giving some response. I'll try and write as fast as possible so I can get the next update out before vacay :).


	5. 五

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe I should stop promising updates, because I'm always late, but anyways, this chapter turned out to be almost 10k long and for what reason? None. I have issues with length. This chapter features a mash up of The Waterbending Scroll and The Blue Spirit - idk anything about geography, so nobody hit me with a fact check on how their route to the Northern Water Tribe is wacky as heck.
> 
> On a side note, silima on tumblr has made[ lovely fanart for the first chapter ](https://silima.tumblr.com/post/625861254855245824/hehe-a-couple-of-drawings-for) of this fic! The illustrations are absolutely beautiful - go check them out! (I figured out how to link, finally! It's over for you all).
> 
> The only warnings for this chapter is canon typical violence and Zuko being a canon typical dumbass x.x

After a few more days of travel, they were forced to stop at a seaside port that bordered the Earth Kingdom, but wasn’t officially enemy territory for Zuko or Azula, in order to restock supplies. Moshi set down in a forest, hidden behind a hill, and from there the three of them walked, Zuko tugging unconsciously at their clothes. They needed new ones—maybe they wouldn’t be killed for looking so Fire Nation here, but walking around in armor like Azula did was hardly an effective way to blend in. 

The docks smelled like salt. Zuko hadn’t realized how much he missed the Wani until the wooden planks of the piers were beneath his feet; he found his eyes searching the ships docked for a small, metal ship filled with dents, that had seen better days.

Ty Lee was practically flitting ahead of the two siblings, bouncing on her toes, her orange and yellow floating around her and making her far more distinguishable. Behind her, Zuko lowered his head and wished he had a hood. He touched his sister, briefly, by the shoulder; she turned, eyes sharp with annoyance.

“We need new clothes,” he said.

Azula scoffed. “For what?”

Zuko glanced around the port nervously. It was a solid mass of green, brown, and blue, colors that blended into the earth and the sea. The three of them, with orange, yellow, red, and black spread across their bodies combined, stood out too much to be comfortable. 

“To blend in?” he told her through gritted teeth.

Azula shrugged merrily. “New clothes aren’t going to cover our eyes  _ or  _ the nasty scar on your face.”

Zuko found his fingers reaching to brush the scarred tissue; he clenched his hand into a fist instead, letting the pain send tremors up his arm in a way that made him not want to reach for anything again. His wrist was healing, slowly but surely, and Zuko could only hope he would have full use of it by the time they got to the North Pole. Sure, he could fight, and sure, it seemed to have gotten a little better after learning the Dragon Dance, but one bad fight could throw it out, and Zuko couldn’t risk permanent nerve, bone, or tendon damage. What use was a pair of dual dao swords if their owner could only use one at a time?

He glanced up and found that Ty Lee had disappeared from their line of sight. Panic welled in his throat, only for him to quickly spot her, having been distracted by a passing merchant. Zuko narrowed his eyes: the merchant didn’t resemble a merchant at all, with a hook tooth, shining gold jewelry, and a rough cut to his face that spoke more of salt sea working his features to the bone, rather than dust.

Sighing, Zuko walked over as quickly as possible, Azula groaning and then following suit. 

“...we have many artifacts for sale, from all over the world,” the ‘merchant’ was saying. Ty Lee looked like she was listening intently. “Forgotten tales from the Southern Water Tribe, talismans said to attract dragons for your, ah, Fire Nation companions,” Azula bristled at the way he said it; Zuko held out a hand, “and even some old relics from before the scourge of the Air Temples.”

Ty Lee’s eyes widened and Zuko stepped forward, pulling her back a few steps and sending the merchant a warning look. 

“It’s a scam,” he hissed in her ear, as low as he could. “That stuff he’s talking about? It’s all fake.”

“But—” She was frowning petulantly.

Zuko shook his head. “It’s not worth our time,” he told her, as gently as possible. “We need to restock and then get out of here. Too much time on land will draw attention.” He didn’t add that they had already done so, that eyes were tracking their movements, shadowy figures hidden in the crowds, merchants setting out their stalls. 

“It would only take a moment,” Ty Lee insisted. “So we can...relax.” 

It was a poor argument. They had hours of travel upon Moshi to ‘relax,’ where there was nothing but the lap of the waves beneath them and the changing of the clouds around them for company. 

“Let the girl look,” the merchant said, sidling up to them. Zuko didn’t miss how his greedy eyes took in her coloring, the strange style of her clothes. Even if he didn’t necessarily know she was an airbender, Zuko knew that word of the Avatar had to have started spreading, and Ty Lee certainly wasn’t from anywhere  _ else _ , not with her gray eyes and colors that hadn’t been worn in a hundred years. The orange they could have passed off as Fire Nation, maybe, but not the yellow. Nobody dared to wear those colors together, for fear of being purged from the world. 

The merchant was a shrewd man. He was also not really a merchant. Zuko knew both of these things, could tell them instinctively, and it made him want to run. Not that he hadn’t dealt with those types of men before; had run into quite a few during his journey (his  _ exile _ , the voice that sounded like a child Azula hissed in reminder), but that didn't make the prospect any more pleasant.

“Come on, Zu—,” Ty Lee said, catching herself before she spat his name across the wooden planks so everyone could  _ really  _ know who they were. Her eyes were wide. 

“Come on, Zuzu,” Azula mimicked, sauntering up with her hands clasped behind her back. She lifted one eyebrow at him playfully, and Zuko sighed, looking at the two fifteen year olds, one with pleading eyes and the other with ones that told him, in simple terms, to play along for whatever reason.

“Fine,” he relented. “For a  _ few  _ minutes  _ only _ .”

The merchant smiled. His teeth were crooked and yellowed. Zuko could see a glint of gold that spoke of lost ones replaced. “This way,” he said, stretching withered fingers towards the plank that led to a large, docked ship that might not be flying any skull and crossbones, but was undeniably a pirate ship. 

It was a bad idea, but Ty Lee was already moving up the gangplank, Azula following suit for no reason other than the fact she seemed to take pleasure in doing whatever Zuko didn’t want, so he had no choice but to follow, aware of the pirate at his back, eyeing his swords like they were worth something. And they were. His dual dao swords were on fine material, sharp and could cut through almost everything, including fire. 

Zuko resisted the itching urge to grab at them, holding his hands back and letting his fingers curl into his clothes instead. 

They reached the top, the merchant leading them down into the cabins below. There was a distressing amount of men loitering around, with sharp swords and ragged clothes. They obviously didn’t care for appearances, or maybe they just played the port crowd for a bunch of idiots.

Azula was watching them with a look in her eyes that made Zuko want to swear. He took a few quick steps, so that he was walking parallel with her.

“Don’t tell me you came looking for a fight,” he whispered in her ear.

She wiggled her fingers. “Not a  _ fight _ , Zuzu. Maybe some target practice?”

“Lala,” he said, capturing her fingers and bringing them down to her side. “How about we browse?”

“No,” she said, petulantly. “You can’t just give me fire like the dragons did and expect me to let it  _ sit _ .”

And there it was: what his sister really wanted. A fight. A reason to put someone down. They’d had their goes in the last couple days; with Zhao on the boat, the Kyoshi Warriors and then Zhao again, but Zuko  _ knew  _ his sister. He knew she never truly settled, that she needed to hurt someone else so she wouldn’t hurt them, that her fire had always been like, that their father had taught her fire to be like that: begging for blood. Begging for blood, constantly, without reprieve. 

It was worse, now that his sister had discovered the secrets of the first Sun Warriors. It was eating her up inside, the fact of it all, the knowledge that her fire could be more than electric blue and neon white. Azula had, essentially, unlearned the bending she had been taught and found a whole other way, but the old way had already been so beaten into her spine that she couldn’t untangle it out without ruining something.

Zuko folded his hand around hers. “I don’t expect you to do that,” he said, as calmly as he could. “But doing it  _ now  _ isn’t going to solve anything. Save it for a real fight, okay? I’ll let you kill Zhao next time.”

She smirked. “That’s the Zuzu I know.”

He laughed. “Which part?”

“Killing Zhao,” she answered. “It’s nice to hear you say it out loud instead of stubbornly resisting the urge to scream or cut off his hands.” Her expression grew thoughtful. “Maybe I should cut off his hands first. Then his feet.  _ Then  _ kill him.”

“Come look at this!” Ty Lee cried, her head popping out of the hold. Zuko sighed, letting go of his sister’s hand and speed walking over to the young girl. He took the scroll she was looking at and pretended to study it.

“Please,” he said through gritted teeth. “Try and be at least a  _ little  _ subtle.”

She blinked at him, then looked around. “Oh,” she said, slowly, taking the scroll back. “I didn’t—I didn’t realize. I just got...excited.” She leaned in closer, her gray eyes bright with excitement. “It’s an  _ Air Nomad scroll. _ ”

Zuko snatched the scroll back and unrolled it, studying it for real this time. Sure enough, there was no mistaking the airbending forms that had been illustrated with a delicate hand, the ink old and faded, the paper curling beneath his fingers from where they held tightly onto it.

It looked real.

He handed it back to the airbender girl. “It’s a fake, Ty Lee.” 

“No it’s not!” Her voice rose; she quickly dropped it again, hands fluttering agitatedly. 

A pirate sidled up to them. “Has something caught your eye?” he asked. Zuko glared at him as best as he could with his already perpetually slitted eye. He could tell the man was putting on an accent, attempting to talk nice; had they never met a merchant? Merchants didn’t talk like that, either.

“How much for this?” Ty Lee asked. The pirate snatched the scroll, his beady eyes flicking the two of them up and down, and then Azula, who was circling the deck with a cold smile directed at any pirate who bothered to try and stop her pacing.

He named a price that made Zuko let out a strangled cough into his elbow and Ty Lee blink.

“...That much?” she asked, her voice small, her shoulders slumping forward dejectedly.

Zuko sighed and waved the ‘merchant’ away. “Let’s go browse,” he said instead, not wanting to make it too obvious that their interest had been specifically in the scroll. Let them think it had just been the first thing to catch their eye, lest they start thinking too hard—and by the shifty looks of it, they were already thinking too hard.

He dragged her inside, down the steps, even when she tried to pull back. Frustrated, he let her go when they reached the bottom, and she stumbled back a few steps, barreling into Azula, who shoved her away without so much as blinking an eye.

“We don’t have money,” Zuko said sharply, when Ty Lee opened her mouth to speak. “We don’t have money, and if we did have money, we couldn’t afford to waste it on a scroll. You’re already an airbender, what do you need a bending forms scroll for?”

“I was just looking,” she said, rubbing her arm and looking upset. “It’s not my fault that everything else I was used to growing up is suddenly gone.” 

Zuko felt his heart soften, regret seeping in. 

“Look,” he said. “Just...look.” He turned to the shelves, studiously gazing at them. The room was small, but filled to the brim with whatever had been found. Trinkets, armor, weapons, scrolls, all crammed together. Zuko let his fingers drift across blades, noting with a wrinkle in his brow that several were Southern Water Tribe relics, one of the wolf head helmets still covered in dry blood, sprinkled across the fading white fur. There was Fire Nation armor too, a dented breastplate, a singed sword, the metal having half melted off and then frozen again.

It left him with a foreboding feeling. There were no specific enemies to this ship, it seemed, but whoever got in their way. Whoever caught their interest. Zuko wondered if they kidnapped people, and if three teenagers seemed like an easy target to them.

The pirate had been looking at his swords. If they even  _ tried  _ to take them, by Agni, Zuko would cut their throats.

“Now you look like you’re plotting murder,” Azula murmured, sidling up to him. “Ready for that fight yet?”

“If I need to be,” Zuko told her, his fingers flexing around his sword hilts—he hadn’t even realized he had reached for them.

Azula was looking at his hands. “They’re really a part of you, aren’t they?” There was a strange look on her face as she said it, as if she didn’t want them to be.

“Lu Ten taught me how to use them, first,” Zuko told her, quietly.

“He did?” She didn’t look interested to hear it at all. Zuko had never known her opinion on their cousin, though she had made her opinion on their uncle quite clear. Zuko knew Lu Ten had reached out to Azula, but he had never known what to do with her, treating her more like a dagger than the fragile china she had been made of when she was just a girl. Zuko had tried to explain to his cousin, once, that you couldn’t treat Azula like she was anything else other than Azula, but he had been nine, his cousin only a few years older, and Lu Ten had not understood.

Zuko’s heart ached for his cousin, deeply. He could feel the ghosts of his cousin’s hands on his, guiding him the first time he had held the dao, telling him how to balance the weight. They had been too heavy for Zuko, back then.

“You know father didn’t like it,” he told Azula, now. “He didn’t...he didn’t want me to ever think I could be good at something if it wasn’t bending.” He had wanted Zuko to feel inferior. He had wanted Zuko to hurt.

And all Zuko had wanted to do was make it all worth it, to impress his father and show him he wasn’t useless, without knowing his father had thrived on Zuko’s weakness, because it meant Ozai had a chance to show off his  _ power _ .

She was still looking at him, Azula was, still waiting to hear what he had to say.

Zuko set the Water Tribe helmet back down on the table and exhaled with it, slowly. “So of course they’re a part of me, now. I had to learn to defend myself somehow, and bending was never going to cut it, since I don’t  _ have  _ any.” He didn’t know how to explain to her that his swords did not equal what bending was to her, but they were not less than that either. They were his own path, carved through the fire he had been tried with time and time again.

When Zuko had first woken up on the Wani, he hadn’t had his swords. Not the ones Lu Ten had gifted him before leaving for the war and never coming back. He had been alone on a ship with a crew he was sure would sooner drown him than listen to him, and he hadn’t had anything to protect himself with.

He had been thirteen and so, so scared.

The first port they stopped in, Zuko had bought his current swords. He couldn’t afford them, but he couldn’t afford to not have them either. They hadn’t been Lu Ten’s, but they had been his for three years now, and that was good enough. The gifter had never mattered, only the swords, though he had treasured his blades maybe doubly so because they were from his cousin.

“You nonbenders are a strange breed,” Azula remarked, obviously still thinking about his swords as well. “Why do you attempt to achieve what benders have when there’s a reason you haven’t?”

“The dragons said that Agni blessed all the children born under His light,” Zuko retorted. “Bending doesn’t make you special.” Even if the voice in his heart still wanted to scream and disagree, say that bending was the  _ only  _ thing that made one special.

“Fuck you,” Azula said, a furrow in her brow, no heat in the words. She cast him one last look before drifting away between the shelves, leaving Zuko to stare at the spoils of war, the only pieces left of dead soldiers whose bodies were likely floating through the seas, halfway to bones.

He sighed and resisted the urge to smash his head against one of the helmets in the hopes it would knock some sense into his mind. It had been a thoughtless thing to say, even if it was mostly true, to his sister, who still lived and breathed bending as if it was the only thing that mattered to her. And it had been, for many years—still was, in fact. Bending had determined which of them was useful, which of them was the heir, and Azula had fought hard to win it all.

Ty Lee appeared next to him in a breath of air, looking restless and flushed. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’m done looking.”

Zuko frowned at her. “Already?” he asked.

She nodded, hands fidgeting. “Where’s Azula?”

“Right here.” His sister reappeared from the shelves that had claimed her, not looking like she had cooled off in any aspect of the word. 

“Find anything interesting?” Zuko asked them both, only to be met with head shakes of disagreement from the two of them. He sighed. “Let’s go, then. We have actual supplies we need to get.”

They started to head up, Zuko carefully making sure they didn’t engage in any more conversation with the unsavory merchants surrounding them, watching them leave. He felt antsy all over; Azula’s itchiness seemed to have infected him, because he found himself ready for a fight, about to start one himself if they didn’t move faster.

They were halfway towards the gangplank when two pirates stepped in front of them, blocking their way. Zuko tried to sidestep them, tried to shoulder his way down, but they held firm, the rest of them creeping forward until they were in a loose circle.

“Is there a problem, gentlemen?” Zuko asked, even though they were far from that. 

“Oh, we have a problem,” a voice drawled, and Zuko stepped back as he heard something slither across the boards. It made goosebumps creep up his spine, and he turned slowly, not wanting to make any sudden moments, as a shirshu crept forward, it’s spiny body moving like a snake, close to the ground. 

Riding it was a woman, maybe in her early twenties. Her hair fell straight and black to her back, her lips painted red. There was something unmistakably criminal about her, not based simply on the tattoos that peeked through her sleeveless shirt, or the parrot that sat primly on her shoulder, claws digging into her skin, but on the curve of her lips, the tilt of her eyes, the way she eyed them as if they were prey, her shirshu leashed but not declawed.

“And what is that?” he asked, adding a, “Captain,” to the end of it. 

The woman smiled at him, but it wasn’t a nice smile, but one that said they were in deep trouble. “Your friend here has thought herself good enough to steal from me.”

Zuko, of course, looked at Azula first, but she was only examining her nails, frowning at a scuff in her armor. Then he looked at Ty Lee, who was shifting on her feet and looking everywhere but at the Captain and Zuko, a guiltiness in her face that she was trying too hard to downplay.

“What did you take?” Zuko hissed at her, quietly.

“I didn’t take anything!” she objected, her voice loud and a little defiant, ears flushed.

The Captain was on her feet and in front of Ty Lee before Zuko could move. She reached forward and snatched the scroll hidden beneath Ty Lee’s orange half cape, fingernails painted black and without a chip in them.

“Don’t lie to me, girl,” she said, sharply, and Zuko was sure she was going to slap the airbender, his body already poised to stop her, but the Captain only smiled and said, “Drop the gangplank. They come with us. We’ll toss them overboard when we’re done.”

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” Zuko said, because as much as his swords sang for it, he wasn’t going to start a fight they might not be able to win. 

“Finally,” Azula whispered, and Zuko knew she was seconds away from lighting up and burning the wooden structure they were currently on to the ground. Or the waves, in this case.

“I don’t think I’ve misunderstood at all,” the Captain replied. “On the contrary, I think I understand more than  _ you _ .”

“And what’s that?” Zuko asked, as he watched the pirates move towards the ganglank. It would splash into the water at any second. Agni, he really  _ didn’t  _ want to start a fight. His body still ached from the last one.

“One, that no one who steals from me survives it,” she said. “Even those who fail at doing so—and everyone fails, with Nyla here.” She patted her shirshu’s head. Zuko had always loved animals, but there was something unnatural about the shirshu. It had an uncanny nose, one that could track a person for miles. Back in the Caldera, one had tracked a Fire Nation traitor all the way to the ship they had nearly escaped off of, dragging them back with its teeth.

“Two,” she continued. “Is that there’s a price out on the head of a girl with Air Nomad tattoos who calls herself the Avatar and the two companions she travels with, the two  _ Fire Nation  _ companions, one of which sports a very visible scar.”

Zhao had moved fast. His father had to know by now, even if word traveled faster by sea than by land. 

“Is it a lot?” Azula asked. The Captain looked at her. “Is it a lot?” Azula repeated. “The bounty. I need to know how much I’m worth.”

“It’s worth more than you could afford,” the Captain snarled back. 

“I highly doubt that,” Azula started, but Zuko stepped on her foot, though it hurt him more than her, namely because she had on pointy metal Fire Nation shoes and his own had thin soles. Maybe the Captain didn’t yet know they were children of the Fire Lord—the moment she found out, though, he was sure they would be dead.

“I can take them,” she hissed in his ear, too low for anyone else to hear. 

“You think this is about you?” he whispered back.

“I don’t suppose we could negotiate,” he tried again, turning to face the Captain.

“If you had anything of value, you wouldn’t be stealing from me,” the woman replied. “That means you’re broke  _ and  _ stupid. I could get a good coin from selling you, and a better one from turning you in.” She flipped a gold piece from her pocket. Zuko watched it spiral in the air.

There were about twenty pirates. Ty Lee could airbend, Azula could firebend, and he could end lives with a flick of his blades. Of course, their cover would be blown and they would have to skip out and find another place to restock, before anyone else got an idea about how much they would cost.

“You can keep your scroll,” Zuko snapped. “But not us. We’re leaving.” He drew his swords to emphasize just how much he meant it, and he heard Azula give a quiet laugh; she was going to bother him about this later, but later meant they had to get out of here first.

Twenty pirates. Three of them. A gangplank that still attached them to the docks, and a port full of liabilities below. 

They weren’t good odds, but Zuko could take them. 

“You’re not,” the Captain said, and as if they were in sync, the three of them moved into offensive positions and attacked.

Zuko took out the two pirates near the gangplank first, slitting their throats before they had even had time to draw their swords. Their bodies hit the water with a splash, Zuko’s blades stained red. He grimaced, seeing Azula casually burning one pirate’s hand as Ty Lee seemed to be working on a more defensive tactic that involved her blowing away anyone who came near her, her cyclone of air sending several more pirates into the shallow seas below.

The air changed and Zuko leapt back, hitting the side of the ship and just narrowly avoiding the shirshu’s barbed tail. He could practically smell the poison on the barbed tips. The Captain was looking at him angrily.

“Angry?” Zuko asked, cocking his head as he readied his body to spring forward.

“Those were two of my best men, you asshole,” she said.

“Can’t have been that good if they died that easily,” Zuko taunted, rolling and cutting at a leg that was in his way, the shirshu missing his head by an inch. A barb lay in the deck where he had been a minute ago when he sprang to his feet, breathing in shakily. 

“Good men often die the fastest,” the Captain remarked, drawing two short daggers from her belt. Zuko smiled. He admired those who fought ambidextrously, a weapon in both hands. That meant they were good. That meant they put up a fight.

Agni, his sister had rubbed off on him too much. It really should be the other way around—the oldest should influence the youngest, yet Azula tried her best to change him to better suit her instead.

He and the Captain went at each other, four blades flashing silver in the light of the cold sun. 

The first thing Zuko realized was that she was good. Really good. Her shirshu was an accessory compared to her skill with the blade, which made Zuko inwardly wish he didn’t have so much false bravado when it came to fighting.

The second thing he realized was that it was hard to fight two blades with his own, and harder to do so when dodging a poisonous animal with a long snout perfect for sniffing out his every imperfection.

It made him sweat.

There were only twenty pirates, but they seemed to be multiplying every time Zuko and the Captain completed a turn around one another. The woman seemed to be enjoying this, as if it was a game, her lips painted in an ever present smile. Zuko didn’t have time to look away, because if he looked away and lost their staring contest, he lost the battle, too. 

Wind tugged at him, sharp and insistent, and Zuko knew Ty Lee was holding her own. He didn’t have time to doubt his sister; he trusted Azula was already dusting the floor with the men around her. She had taken on less and come out on top in minutes alone. 

A blade cut through his sleeve, and Zuko cursed as colorfully as he could to distract himself from the pain.

The Captain smiled. “Who taught a pampered prince how to talk like that?”

Zuko rolled his working eye, carefully avoiding the fact that she had said _prince_ , which meant she knew, which meant other people could as well. “A shipful of depraved sailors and failures.”

“Interesting,” she said. “Maybe I’ll get them next.”

Zuko snorted and his blade cut through an inch or so of hair, which fell to the floorboards. The Captain glared and he said, “You’d never be able to board my ship.”  _ Not when I was on it _ , went unsaid. 

She glared, flicked her knives, and he ducked, hissing when the flat end hit his injured wrist and made him drop his sword. He dove across the deck to retrieve it, turning just in time to cross his blades and block the dagger headed towards his scarred side, swiping one blade out and using it to send the shirshu screeching away in pain.

“You bastard,” the Captain growled, and it was enough energy that Zuko was able to flip her onto her back and then to her feet, his swords crossed, once at her throat and the other at her hip, stopping her from reaching for any weapon that could harm him.

“I’ll slit her throat!” he yelled, as loudly as he could. Not that he thought the pirates really had an ounce of loyalty, but maybe they did. 

The fighting died; Ty Lee and Azula whirling in unison—Zuko smiled at this, wondering if he should point it out later and poke at Lala’s buttons—with surprise on only one of their faces. He breathed in heavily in the silence, collecting himself, before pushing the Captain towards the gangplank.

“We’re leaving,” he said, slowly, his voice at a normal level now in the still air. “I don’t care who you tell. You can hunt us down. But today we’re  _ going _ .” He gestured for Ty Lee and Azula to go first, his sister sending him a nasty glare as the Avatar tugged at her elbow, guiding her forward with light steps.

His feet hit the gangplank. Zuko walked backwards, not wanting to end up with a sword in his back, feeling his injured wrist tremble with the effort to keep his sword blade tight and in place. He felt more than he saw the Captain smirk.

“You’re good,” she remarked. “But hurt.” The words were almost soft; Zuko frowned, and then she kicked out and twisted their bodies; the gangplank fell, and them with it.

He barely had time to tighten his grip on his swords before he plunged into the water in a flailing of limbs, everything going dark and then blue as he registered the bubbles floating past his nose, and then he kicked up and he broke the surface, the swords still in his hands like they were some kind of lifeline. 

“Zuko!” Ty Lee yelled, and he felt the wind swirl around him, her face tight in concentration, even as he tried to gasp out that he could reach the docks by himself.

“My name’s June,” the Captain called, from where she had grabbed the ladder her crew had lowered for her. She was smirking at him. “And you look like a drowned cat.”

Zuko didn’t have the energy to say something back, only glare as hard as he could and hope the scar did the rest of the work for him.

She smiled, climbing up, and said, “I’ll let you go today, since I’ve never let myself be bested by a man before.” Zuko had no doubt about that—female captains were rare, but it was obvious she had earned it. She likely could have killed him, too, if she had chosen too, instead of just half drowning him. 

Her lips curled into a red smile. “Let’s hope we never meet again.”

* * *

Ty Lee was upset, the kind that was hard to shake off, the kind that was making her walk away as fast as possible, clutching her staff with tight, whitened knuckles. The adrenaline of the fight had worn off and left her cold.

“What is it?” Zuko asked behind her. She could hear the water still dripping off his clothes. She ignored him, marching on behind, and heard him let out a frustrated breath. “Ty Lee, what  _ is  _ it?”

“Nothing!” she replied, rubbing at her arms as she walked towards the hill where Moshi was. 

“She’s having a moral crisis,” Azula remarked drily behind her, her metal clanging as she walked. They never had managed to get those new clothes, or the new supplies they were supposed to. All because she had gotten distracted.

“Over what,” Zuko said. Ty Lee could practically feel the emotions rolling off of him, a tight ball of rage and frustration going unchecked. She hadn’t been with the siblings for long, but she had figured out quickly enough that, while Zuko was kinder, that didn’t make him less capable of his sister’s anger. He just did a better job of hiding his complicated emotions, the ones that stemmed from old rage and scars, beneath his skin, where he thought they belonged.

Azula didn’t answer her brother, but Ty Lee could practically feel the sharpened bronze of her eyes on Ty Lee’s back, forcing her spine to straighten.

“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” she finally bit out, feeling her own emotions racing in the way that had made all the monks chide her. Ty Lee had always felt too much, they had said. She needed to be at peace with herself, she said. She was  _ the Avatar _ , they had said, so she needed to be  _ balanced _ . 

Her mother had always told her feeling so much was a gift. She had told Ty Lee that her emotional range made her a better person, but Ty Lee had always hated it, because when her mother had said that, she had meant that Ty Lee was the peacemaker, that she was the one who caved first, that she was the one who had to be there for all her sisters whenever they went through a hard time, because she was so  _ compassionate  _ and  _ patient  _ and  _ happy. _

It was hard to be the only nice one. Ty Lee wondered if she could leave that title behind in this second chance at life, a century later than she should be alive. If she wanted to get angry, she could just get angry, couldn’t she?

“What was?” Zuko asked. She could hear the frown in his voice.

“The...the ship!” she exclaimed. “It was just a…” Just a what? She didn’t know. She huffed out a sigh. “We didn’t have to  _ fight  _ about it.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have tried to steal from pirates!” Zuko said. “And then lie about it!”

“You—” Ty Lee couldn’t respond to that, because he was right: She had been stupid. She had gotten them all in danger because she had tried to steal the airbending scroll. Zuko had been right, too, when he said she didn’t  _ need  _ it, that she was already practically a master airbender—spirits knew the monks would never have settled for anything less.

She hadn’t needed the scroll, but she had wanted it. She had wanted it badly. It had been stupid, yes, but Ty Lee had felt drawn to it, had felt the need to cling to it, as if was her own lifeline. The memory of the state of the Southern Air Temple was still seared into her mind, the burned remains of anything that could have been used to rebuild her old life. Only skeleton bones and scorched stone.

So she had wanted the scroll, because it was a piece of home, and Ty Lee had nothing left of home except for Moshi, her staff, and the clothes on her back. She had wanted it so badly she had followed her impulse and tried to steal it, desperate for some memory, desperate for something to ground her again, to hold her steady so that the loss couldn’t overwhelm her again.

It had been a petty, small thing to do. One she had done without listening to her head, but rather her pounding heart. 

“I what?” Zuko had stopped walking, so Ty Lee turned and faced him, crossing her arms. 

“You didn’t have to kill them,” she finally said.

Zuko gave a short snort of disbelief. “You’re mad because I cut a couple pirate’s throats before they could slit ours?” 

Ty Lee scuffed at the ground. “We’re trying to save people, not kill them.”

“I don’t care about your moral code, all I care about is making sure the two of you get out alive,” Zuko responded. She wasn’t sure if he was purposefully avoiding her statement, or not. 

“We didn’t have to, though,” Ty Lee argued. “We could have just  _ left _ .”

“No, we couldn’t have, because you stole from pirates, and there were twenty plus of them, and only three of us.” Zuko exhaled, his hands clenching and unclenching around the folds of his darkened red clothes. “Look, Ty Lee, I know Air Nomads are pacifists.”  _ And they were killed because of it _ , Ty Lee heard between the lines. “But Lala and I can’t conform to your moral code; Agni, I don’t even know if  _ you’ll  _ be able to conform to your own morals the longer this gets.”

Ty Lee stared at him silently, feeling tears prickle in her eyes, and Zuko’s mouth hardened.

“People are going to die,” he finally said. “And I’m not going to fight you every time because of it.”

“They don’t have to,” she responded, coldly. 

Zuko rubbed a hand across his brow. “Ty Lee,” he said, an edge to the words. “I don’t care if you’re not down with murder; you don’t have to be. But I’ll do what  _ I  _ have to, alright? You’re not in a place to try and force your dead beliefs on us.” Ty Lee scoffed at that, working at the lump in her throat, and Zuko backtracked, fumbling to add, “I know—I know it’s your beliefs, and I respect that. You do what you need to, and I’ll do what I need to, but you can’t—you can’t keep judging us because of that.”

Azula lifted her chin, gaze challenging, a slight curl in her lips indicating she agreed with every word her brother was saying.

Ty Lee exhaled, sharply and sadly. “I need to be alone right now,” she said stiffly.

Zuko started to say something, but his sister surprisingly grabbed his arm. “That’s fine,” she said, in the sweet voice that Ty Lee couldn’t find it in her bones to fully trust. “Zuzu and I will go get the supplies we were supposed to.” 

Ty Lee didn’t know if Azula was upset with her, too, or if she was just following her brother. It was hard for her to guess who was really in control of the other; it seemed to shift, their dominant relationship with one another.

“Fine,” she responded, turning and marching away before either of them could say anything else that would make her really start to cry. She could already feel the tears starting to drip down her face, and she wasn’t sure if she was crying over the unfair death, or the scroll she had lost, or her people, gone forever, with nothing but her remaining to remember them.

Would they even want to be remembered? The Air Nomads had preached returning to the wind, giving back to the land, becoming one with the spirits and such. Their memory was only made to last while they were living, but it was their lessons that preceded and followed them, even after they were gone. Yet Ty Lee’s memory of their lessons were all tangled up in her mind, a million threads stretched between black and white, right and wrong.

The forest was cold beneath her feet, and Ty Lee let out gust of wind, the trees whipping around her in a frenzy. That felt good.

The trees settled, the wind changing. She relaxed her grip on her staff.

The arrow almost caught her in the shoulder.

Ty Lee felt it a moment before it should have landed, turning just in time for it to skim past her, slicing a neat cut through her orange shawl. Her staff spun out, in a whirl, deflecting five more that flew from the trees with a deadly accuracy that had her thrown off her feet, tripping backward and sprawling flat on her back, knocking the air flat from her lungs.

There was the clink of metal, and Ty Lee straightened, gripping her ribs and struggling to breathe. She tried to stand, only for an arrow to graze her cheek, forcing her back.

There were archers in the trees; she sent out a soft breeze and could feel their presence, a dozen of them crouched and waiting with their weighted bows and arrows with metal tips. Ty Lee could probably take them out, but not all at once, and the odds weren’t in her favor. It was likely she would be hit with an arrow, or several, before successfully incapacitating them all.

A man stepped into view in front of her. Ty Lee recognized the hard grooves in his face, the greediness in his eyes, from the Southern Pole and Kyoshi Island. Zhao. The man that had been tracking all of them.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the Avatar herself,” he breathed, bending forward to look at her. “Where are the Fire Lord’s brats now?”

Ty Lee swallowed. “I—we’re not traveling together anymore.” It was a flimsy lie, even to her own ears, but the Fire Nation soldier looked satisfied and pleased to hear it. 

“Good,” he murmured. “Then I take it you won’t have a problem coming with me, will you?” His grin widened. “And if you do, an arrow through your heart or through one of those small humans on the dock will solve that little issue, won’t it? ”

Her throat was dry. She nodded, slowly, and then there was cold iron being clamped around her wrists and she was dragged away.

* * *

Zuko cursed until he ran out of words to say, leaving him breathless and pressed against the hard bark of the tree he was clutching at, Azula standing silently with her arms crossed beside him. The soldiers were long gone, having taken Ty Lee away in chains, leaving not a single arrow in the underbrush.

“Well, that was stupid,” Azula sneered.

Zuko sighed and rubbed at his head. “It wasn’t—”

“She laid down and took it,” Azula cut in, point blank. Her foot was tapping, her features pressed into annoyance.

“She tried to cover for us,” Zuko responded. “We need to get her back.”

“Why? It’s not like she’s grateful for everything we’ve done for her,” Azula said. 

“Lala—” Zuko sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We kind of need her.” He decided on, knowing there were a million other things he could say, but none that would probably dissuade his sister from straight up stealing Moshi and leaving Ty Lee to the mercy of Zhao. “You know what Zhao will do if he gets his hands on her.”

“Mmm, I don’t think we do,” Azula said, a gleam in her eyes that told Zuko she was messing with him.

“I’m going to get her,” Zuko responded, already heading back towards the port. There had to be a clothing shop around there somewhere, didn’t there?

“Zuko!” Azula snapped, grabbing his wrist and making him grind to a stop, even if she let him go just as quickly. His sister might be the possessive type, but she never held him for long—she knew he detested physical contact, and Zuko knew she knew why, even if they had never talked about it,  _ couldn’t  _ talk about it.

“Those were the Yuyan archers,” she said with a sigh, hands planted on her hips in a surprisingly motherly way. “The elite warriors who never miss. Their fortress, the Pohuai Stronghold, hasn’t been breached in a thousand years. Dad told me they can pin a fly to a tree from a thousand feet away.” Her eyes were serious. “No one gets in, no one gets out.”

“Never thought you would be one to back down from a challenge,” Zuko told her.

She scoffed. “I’m telling you to be careful, you idiot. Why do I have to spell everything out?”

“Look, I’ll disguise myself. Zhao doesn’t think we’re traveling together anymore, so I’ll make him think i’m some vigilante, alright? We’ll be fine. Stay by Moshi and don’t cause trouble.” He leaned forward and, on impulse, kissed her forehead.

Azula wrinkled her nose and stepped back. “Don’t push it,” she said. “We’re not those loving siblings yet.”

“Hey, you said yet,” Zuko pointed out, already turning to go. “That means we’re going to be like that someday, right?”

She rolled her eyes so far he could see the whites. “You and your pathetic dreams.”

“Love you too,” Zuko responded, and Azula went terribly quiet, blinking at him for a very long time, until Zuko realized what he had said.

“Sorry,” he managed. She turned her head away, slowly, her entire posture stiff. Zuko knew that some part of her knew that he did love her, but they had never said it to each other, the  _ I love you,  _ love that had been twisted in the hands of their father, left them aching for more by their mother. The love they knew and the love they held were two very different things.

A year ago, Zuko hadn’t thought his sister had loved him anymore, but she had come to him, showed up on his face with a hardness to her face and he had known that, while she had laughed while his face has been burned off, maybe she had cried for him too, when no one was looking.

They were learning to love one another slowly and surely. The fact that she had chosen to come with him and Ty Lee at all meant that she had chosen him over their father, at least for now, and that meant progress was being made, slowly and surely.

But they couldn’t say I love you yet, which meant Zuko had messed up.

However, there was no time to fix it now. As much as he wanted to curl up and hold his sister close until they both felt okay again, he instead had to run down the hill towards the port again, where Pohuai Stronghold gleamed black obsidian in the harsh background, far off shore.

Agni was setting, which was a blessing and a curse. Zuko used the cover of falling night to steal through the square, spotting a peddler with theatre clothes stacked on the back of their cart and snatching up the first two articles of clothing he could find: a black under suit and a mask of the blue spirit, a character from one of Zuko’s favorite plays. He was almost hit with overwhelming nostalgia and memory, but he shoved it down as he stripped off his outer garments in an alley and shrugged on the new clothes, which were surprisingly form fitting, like a second skin. The mask was able to be tied neatly behind his head, resting heavily over his features, the wood knocking. Despite the discomfort, Zuko couldn’t deny that a part of it felt right, the blue face carved on it.

He kept his swords. Maybe they would be a dead giveaway, but there was no blacksmith near he could steal from—blacksmiths were also notoriously hard to steal from—and he could just use one of them if it came down to it. Besides, Zhao couldn’t  _ prove  _ anything if he couldn’t see his face.

Changed, he left the clothes in a bundle and hoped nobody stumbled upon them and decided to take them, then made a running leap to the rooftops, landing with a catlike balance that came from years of balancing on a ship at sea. Zuko scanned the surrounding village and pathway to the Stronghold carefully, mapping the quickest route, then took off, lightly and sure footed across the shingled and gabled rooftops, sliding down and up, only narrowly missing slipping and falling a few times. 

He reached the stronghold faster than he had thought, the sky a dark gray threatening to dive into darkness completely in the following minutes. It was great for concealing him, but would make seeing a lot more difficult, which was especially dangerous when entering a stronghold equipped with elite warriors that were hard to see in the  _ daytime _ . 

Zuko flexed his fingers, letting his eyesight adjust slowly, picking up the minuscule details around him: the grass shoots beneath him, each blade waving in the wind; the stones of the pathway leading back into the village; the curves of iron on the heavy gates, slick with some sort of substance in the strengthening moonlight. There were several stories to the Pohuai Stronghold, but Zuko could pick out armed guards near a set of doors that indicated that was probably his best bet to start looking for Ty Lee, assuming she was even in there. 

The knowledge that there were probably more armed warriors he couldn’t see sat heavy in his stomach, but there was nothing Zuko could do about that. 

He exhaled, and then darted forward, sticking as close to the shadows as possible, only a glint of black in the stretching masses of darkness. He should have brought a fuse, or something to use as a distraction, but the only thing Zuko had to throw away were his swords, which he couldn’t afford to give up.

Brute force would have to do. Zuko flung himself over the gate, leaping as high as possible and just grazing the edges of the barbed wire, which ripped through the stomach of his shirt, and landed in a hard roll, feet scuffing across the ground. He touched his fingers to the scratches, but they didn’t come away sticky or wet, which was a relief.

The guards had moved, bows out, and Zuko ducked forward as they both fired into the night, eyes sharp and focused. They weren’t benders, which was a plus, but neither was Zuko, and he didn’t even know if that made it a fair fight or not. He sighed, drew his swords, and raced forward with light feet, slashing through an arrow and jamming his elbow into the side of one guard, kicking the other’s legs out from under them and avoiding an arrow point to the face. Hopefully, being long range shooters made them bad close range fighters.

Zuko rammed straight through the doors and abandoned all sense of secrecy as he heard a flare rise into the sky and explode, likely to signal an intruder. Getting in was the easy part, but finding Ty Lee and getting them both out was another thing all together, one he didn’t look forward to having to accomplish.

Agni, life was much easier when you were alone on a boat and not worrying about anyone else but yourself. Zuko was utterly unprepared to commit treason and save the world—all he had were a set of skewed morals, lots of rage, two swords, and a sociopathic sister. 

Also an Avatar, one who was currently held up by chains stretching to the floor and the ceiling, Zuko discovered as he threw a bucket of water onto the firebender guard standing in front of the door and promptly kicked it down. 

Ty Lee lifted her head, shock warring across her features as she saw him standing there. She opened her mouth, but Zuko wasted no time for a catch up chat, slicing through her chains with a brute force that made his wrist ache—it was never going to heal at this rate, which was bad news. She fell to the floor, a startled oomph escaping her lips.

“Get up, we need to go,” Zuko snapped at her, hauling her to her feet. The manacles were still attached and trailing chain link, weighing her thin form down. “Where’s your staff?”

She shrugged. “I think they put it in a room. But, Zuko, why—?”

“Agni, we’re a  _ team _ ,” Zuko hissed at her. “You’re one of us. We weren’t going to leave you behind.”

“Zhao said you would come because you needed me,” Ty Lee admitted quietly, hugging her arms to her chest. She wasn’t looking at him.

Zuko let out a frustrated sigh. “That’s true, but you...just come on! We need to get out of here before fifty reinforcements arrive. Can you bend?”

She shrugged again, snapping her fingers and summoning a waning flame. “I can, but those chains were weird. My bending feels almost weaker.”

“Dampeners,” Zuko muttered with a curse. “They press onto your acupoints, blocking your chi from flowing properly.” He caught her alarmed look and added, “Don’t worry! You’ll heal soon, but your bending might be erratic for a few hours. Now let’s  _ go. _ ”

He ran towards the door, slamming back out and taking out the first guard that had arrived with a kick to the jaw that might have snapped the neck. Ty Lee appeared in the doorway, immediately going to the room across from the one she was in and shoved it open with a faintly weak burst of air. A moment later, her staff flew into her hand. Zuko sheathed his swords and ducked into it as well, finding a set of knives and throwing stars while she sent a volley of archers falling back down the corridor.

He reappeared, throwing them—one, two, three, four, five—and knocking out the rest, before grabbing Ty Lee and bodily pulling her down the hallway, avoiding limbs and other body parts.

They slammed through the doors, and an arrow slammed through Zuko’s shoulder. He yelled, nearly dropping forward, feeling the arrowhead lodged in between bone and flesh. Ty Lee gasped behind him, her hands finding his, and Zuko blinked through the pain to see the twenty bows and arrows aimed straight at them as a spotlight flooded across the courtyard.

“Where’s your sister, Prince Zuko?” Zhao asked, stepping forward. The smug look of self importance on his face made Zuko want to hurl—or maybe that was just the pain and the nausea churning in his gut. 

“I don’t know who that is,” Zuko said, gripping a throwing star so tightly in his hand that it drew blood. He made his voice lower, the mask warping it as the words traveled through.

Zhao cocked his head. “Then who are you?” he asked, an amused smile playing across his face, as if he was allowing Zuko the benefit of the doubt. Zuko nearly laughed in his face and told him whatever games he tried to play would never even come close to living with Azula. Zhao was nothing but a washed up excuse of a soldier, a minion playing at being the big, bad villain. 

“The Blue Spirit,” Zuko answered. “Obviously.” He was a bad liar. He had always been a bad liar. Now, Zuko wished he was a little more convincing.

Zhao gave a tight smile. “Well,  _ Blue Spirit _ , you better surrender the Avatar before we kill you.”

“No,” Zuko said, smiling beneath his mask, even if Zhao couldn’t see it.

“So be it,” Zhao said. “You won’t last long against the Yuyan archers.”

Zuko scoffed, long and deliberate, trying to taper it off quickly, before the pain could be heard in his voice. He was trembling where he stood. “Neither would you.”

Zhao laughed. “You’re a washed up excuse for royalty. They listen to  _ me _ .”

Zuko rolled his body out, ignoring the pain that coursed through his bones and arm. “Their loss. You can have them do the dirty work, but who says you’ll be able to prove it?” He tapped his mask—one, two,  _ three— _ and nudged Ty Lee behind him as he dropped on the count, her staff slamming out with a gust of wind so strong Zuko nearly got swept away in it.

The archers fell back, but not before three arrows embedded themselves neatly in the wood of Ty Lee’s staff, Zuko cutting one in half and catching the other narrowly, splinters lodging themselves in his hand he flung the four throwing stars left in his hand, hitting flesh, but was unsure if it was a killing shot.

Zhao sighed, his fists igniting, and Zuko flung himself forward on his elbows as a blast went right over his head, a scream slipping through his clenched teeth in pain. Ty Lee raced forward, her feet barely brushing the ground despite the chains still trailing her, and blasted out with her own fire, wincing in pain. 

Zuko hauled himself to his feet, throwing his last knife straight into Zhao’s foot. The now Admiral screamed, dropping, and Ty Lee used the distraction to spin out her staff into a glider and grab Zuko beneath his arms, whispering an apology in his bad ear as they took to the skies, swinging through the air as Zuko hit away arrows and Ty Lee flew them into the trees, branches crashing past them.

Zuko gasped in pain as one slashed at his arrow, driving in the angle, and Ty Lee yelped, dropping them to the ground as if they were made of bricks. 

For a minute, Zuko lay gasping and staring up at the night sky, speckled with branches and leaves. 

“I’m sorry,” Ty Lee whispered.

“You do a lot of apologizing,” Zuko remarked.

“Oh, let her say her sorries,” a familiar voice remarked, Azula’s face appeared in front of his line of vision. “It probably makes her feel better about herself.”

Zuko sighed and sat up, then winced at the movement, his eyes swimming. When he was done gasping for breath, he said, “This has to stop.”

Both girls blinked at him. Zuko ran a hand through his sweaty hair, his fingers knocking against his mask. He drew it up, letting it rest against his forehead. 

“This fighting,” he said. “You’re her teacher, Azula, and she’s not done learning. I know the three of us aren’t exactly on the same plane, and I know you’re both fifteen and probably stressed as hell, but—but we need to be united. We’re in this for the long run, and if we’re not together, no one else will be either.”

There was a pause. Azula clapped.

“Touching speech, brother,” she said, sitting down. “I almost shed a tear.”

“ _ Azula _ ,” Zuko said, then let out a groan of frustration, his head dropping forward to hit his knees. “I didn’t sign up to be the pep talker of this group, you know.”

“No, you didn’t, but you’re quite good at it. Have you considered that as a career option?”

“Wait, isn’t your job being...being the Fire Lord one day?” Ty Lee cut in. Zuko thought she was joking, but a look at her face said she was dead serious.

For some reason, the thought was so funny that Zuko laughed, and then he couldn’t stop laughing, even though his ribs ached and his shoulder screamed and there was an arrow embedded in his bone and flesh and tendon and muscle.

When he had stopped laughing long enough to breathe, he said, “Me?  _ Fire Lord _ ? I’ve been banished for  _ three  _ years, and I can’t fucking firebend! I am my father’s last choice for his heir, and his biggest failure.” He let his hand drift to his scar, rubbing the scarred tissue as a reminder of just how much of a failure he was and had been. 

On the bad days, he could still feel his father’s hand on his face, cupping it almost gently as he had burned it off.

Ty Lee was staring at him. She didn’t look horrified, or sad, but as if she was thinking, hard and intense.

“Sorry I asked,” she finally said.

“Don’t say something like that again,” Azula said. She paused, then added, “I am the best, after all.” The words were hollow, for once, but Zuko let her keep them.

They left it at that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did Zuko get his clothes back? Will his wrist ever heal? Find out next week (or maybe the one after, but hopefully next week), in a new, action packed chapter!
> 
> Leave a kudo and a comment so that your local ao3 author can thrive! I'm also on [ tumblr ](https://astarlightmonbebe.tumblr.com/) if you want to hit up me or my ask box or whatever.


	6. 六

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter fought me every word of the way...but at least it's like super lengthy? I'm honestly very unsatisfied with this and it feels really ooc, but hey! I DO want to say thank you to everyone reading this!!! The amount this fic grew in the last month was staggering honestly - 6k hits, 180+ subs, 300+ kudos? I'm used to fighting for that for a lot longer, but you all really left some great comments and everything; they really make me feel fuzzy inside, so thank you <3
> 
> Anyways, this chapter features some bad fortunes, Azula experiencing feelings, and their arrival at the Northern Water Tribe! Not many warnings for this one, I don't think. Also, I'll read over this in the morning - there shouldn't be any big mistakes, but maybe a few typos, so sorry about that.

“We should be at the North Pole any day now,” Zuko announced. He could definitely feel it—the air was cold and his breath was frosty when he exhaled.

“But first, we need to get this looked at,” Azula said, prodding Zuko’s badly wrapped shoulder wound. He hissed in pain and fell back; she smiled. “We don’t want it to get infected, Zuzu.”

He heaved out a groan, opening his mouth to argue, only to be shut down by Ty Lee sweetly interrupting to say, “Moshi needs to rest, too. We’ve been running her hard.”

Zuko glanced down at the sky bison they sat on, and found himself begrudgingly agreeing. Ty Lee snapped the reins, as if she had been expecting this, and sent them down towards the ground and the village dotting the expansive countryside, likely the last land they would see before the ice floes of the North Pole. 

“There’s a volcano here,” Azula observed with a slight frown, pointing out the mass of rock that rose from the greenery surrounding it. 

“I didn’t know you could sense volcanos,” Zuko said.

She shrugged half heartedly. “Ever since the dragons, I’ve been more in tune with sensing fire.” Zuko looked at her curiously; it was unlike his sister to admit fallibility or weakness, or that her bending had ever been anything less than the best. 

Moshi settled onto the ground with a thump, dust flying up to coat them. Azula coughed and gave a disgruntled groan, muttering something about beasts and filthiness, immediately dismounting with a leap. Zuko had to crawl out more than anything, clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw ached, before landing on the ground with a wheeze and a scattering of dirt into his face.

“I’m hungry,” Ty Lee remarked plaintively, landing next to them with an ease Zuko envied. Zuko was also hungry; they were all hungry, and had been hungry for some time.

“We’ll find something in town,” Zuko said. A winding road led down into the sparsely populated countryside, the shadow of the volcano practically eclipsing the clay huts and buildings. Despite it’s not exactly prime location, the village seemed to be thriving; he could make out the shapes of people bustling about, children running through the surrounding grass.

“Maybe some medicine too,” Ty Lee remarked, eyeing his aching shoulder wound. Zuko had tried his best to bandage and treat it, and though it was holding for now, it certainly wasn’t getting any better. 

“Hmm,” Azula said, eyeing the town shrewdly. “We’ll see.”

After saying their goodbyes to Moshi—which, in all honesty, mostly consisted of Ty Lee hugging her sky bison and whispering that they would be back soon, and would she like to eat that giant pile of grass over there, it looked delicious?—the three of them set off down the road, the noon sun beating down on them from above. Agni sure loved to test how far Zuko could go before passing out due to heat stroke.

They seemed to trundle down the road forever, passing over a hill and walking down and down and reaching the entrance to the village, which was as small up close as it had appeared to be from a distance. There was a single road that led through the town, so they followed it to the main market area, which mainly consisted of eldery women and men manning stalls while mothers shopped and children played.

Azula, always the one to be a woman on a mission, peeled away from them and set off towards one of the stalls, where she quickly purchased some dried food and then some herbs. “Where’s your healer?” she demanded as Zuko struggled to catch up with his awkward, injured gait.

“Healer?” the elderly woman echoed. She was a small and shriveled thing, lined with the marks of the sun and age. Her shrewd eyes took in everything about their mottled group, not lingering, but appearing to notice everything all at once at the same time. Zuko’s injury was pretty obvious, but he couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable at how she looked at it.

“Yes,” Azula said. “A healer. Do you know what that is?”

“Madame Wu’s apprentice is  _ quite  _ the herbalist,” the old woman finally said with a smile. 

“Fine,” Azula snapped. “Who is Madame Wu?”

Zuko came up behind her, touching her elbow and guiding her back a few paces. “I think she means, could you please tell us where to find Madame Wu?” 

The old woman pointed silently towards a shop across the street, a building with a sign hanging in front of it that proclaimed it home to ‘Madame Wu, Seer and Fortune Teller.’

“You have got to be kidding me,” Zuko mumbled under his breath, turning to hobble over after thanking the elderly woman. 

“I think it will be fun,” Ty Lee said, floating back to them. She had a habit, Zuko had noticed, of drifting this and that way whenever they ventured off of Moshi. Perhaps it was a product of time and century, of taking in the sights and seeing the changes wrought by a war that had lasted for one hundred years.

A war that would, hopefully, end before it became one hundred and one years.

Zuko stared up at the swinging sign. His father had a practice of putting self proclaimed fortune tellers and seers to death if they didn’t predict what he wanted them to. Zuko could recall the daughter of one of them, who had taken to turtleducks like he had, seeing her regularly at the pond under the pretense of cleaning it. However, after her mother had made a bad call about the wrath of Agni, she had disappeared. 

It had been months before Zuko had learned that she, too, had been put to death.

“Agni, are you coming?” Azula snapped, standing stiffly in the doorway, as if touching the sides would burn her.

“Uh, yeah,” Zuko said, glaring at her as he limped inside, following the flicker of color that came from Ty Lee’s clothes as she vanished into the looming darkness that was the entrance.

“Hello?” her voice echoed from within, calling out, and Zuko bumped against a few walls in the fading sunlight, before turning a corner and stepping into a room lit by candles. Colorful fabrics and papery fabrics were illuminated in the dim lighting, centered on the face of a woman with a face painted in makeup so severely that Zuko started where he stood. 

“Welcome,” she said in a low voice, “to Madame Wu’s. Have you come to have your fortune told, brave travelers?”

“We’re looking for your assistant, actually,” Zuko said. “We heard she was a healer?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed to sharp points. “Song!” she called. There was the bustling of fabric and the swishing of skirts, and then a young woman burst through the hanging curtains, looking flustered. Zuko could smell earth on her, and there were a few leaves tangled in her hair.

“Yes?” she said, turning to face the three of them appraisingly. “Customers?”

“They’re interested in your...services,” Madame Wu said stiffly, shuffling the deck of decorated cards and letting them spill out on the table in front of them. 

Song looked at the three of them and decided that Zuko was, in fact, the one interested in her services. “Here,” she said, pulling back a sheet of fabric. “My space is this way.”

“Uh, thanks,” Zuko said, shifting to walk awkwardly after her. Azula started to follow, but Madame Wu made a sharp tsking sound.

“You will have your fortunes read,” she declared. “While your  _ friend  _ is with Song, or you will have no help from either of us.”

“You can’t threaten me,” Azula snarled, but surprisingly, Ty Lee reached out to her and rested a hand on her arm comfortingly.

“It’s okay,” she said. “We’d be happy to have our fortunes read.”

“No I wouldn’t be,” Azula hissed, but Ty Lee merely smiled at her.

“It’ll be fun, don’t you think?” she asked brilliantly.

“Just do it, Lala,” Zuko muttered, throwing her a glance. She glared at him, blue fire flaring in her eyes, but Zuko only  _ looked  _ at her, and eventually she caved, much faster than he had expected. He watched her sit down next to an excited Ty Lee, wondering if maybe, just maybe, his sister had started to soften towards the young airbender.

Song was waiting when he looked back, her gaze bright. When she saw he was ready to go, she ducked through the curtains, Zuko hurrying to follow her quick pace through the maze of drapes and into an open space that resembled a renovated courtyard. The room, he noted as he left it, smelled strongly of incense, but the space he entered smelled like flowers and clean air.

“I have to say, I’m not that good,” Song was saying. “I self taught myself, and my mom taught me some before she...she passed.”

“Oh,” Zuko said, unsure of what else to say. He watched her bustle about, collecting a grinder and pestle, selecting some herbs and bandages. 

She turned back to him, smiling widely. She was pretty, Zuko supposed, with long brown hair in a braid and a face one could only describe as ‘kind.’ The kind of face one might forget—which was a concept Zuko might have been able to apply to himself before his face had been melted off—but was nice to look at all the same.

“Here, sit,” she said, patting the stool beside her. Zuko sat, quietly and obediently, watching her grind some substance that smelled strongly. 

“Sorry about your mom,” he finally said, unsure of what else to say that would fill the suddenly oppressive silence.

Song paused, glancing at him. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “Madame Wu is like a mother to me, now. It’s been...it’s been a few years, but when I came here, I was starving and sick and she took me in. I know she seems a bit strange, but she’s kind.”

“I never said she wasn’t,” Zuko muttered. “I, uh, lost my mother too.”

Song looked at him sadly. “Do you mind?” she asked, gesturing at his clothes. “I need to see the wound.”

“Um, sure,” Zuko mumbled, feeling strangely flushed as he peeled away the layers of fabric, and then carefully removed the bandages, wincing in pain as he did.

“Has she been gone a long time?” Song whispered as she examined the barely healed over arrow wound. “That’s nasty,” she added as an afterthought.

Zuko shrugged, then thought maybe he shouldn’t do that as pain flared through his newly exposed wound. The air was hitting it, making it sting. “You could say that,” he said, to both parts. 

Song smiled, using a pair of metal prongs to pick up a herb poultice. Zuko inhaled, and then immediately wished he hadn’t, since the sharp scent of herbs and the glint of metal sent the infirmary of the ship rushing back to him in all of its horribleness. 

“Is this okay?” Song was asking, and Zuko opened his eyes to see her face hovering inches from his, watching him with a look of concern. He realized he had gone rigid and pulled back from the medicine, frozen.

“Yeah,” he said, softly, uncurling his fingers from the fists that had formed. 

She looked at him for a second, before turning back to his wound. “You know,” she said. “The Fire Nation hurt me, too.” Zuko glanced at her out of the corner of his good eye. “When they attacked my village, I suffered burns up and down my legs and my back. That raid took my father and my mother from me, and it left me with a permanent reminder of all the pain.”

Zuko watched her work silently, the tears glistening in her eyes. He felt paralyzed, unable to find the words that would make her stop talking.

She continued. “It’s been a few years since then, but it still hurts, you know?” She was looking at him, too, darting glances between dabs of herbs that stung like hell. Zuko managed to hold back his flinches, spine ramrod straight, hands curled into his clothes and teeth clenched as he listened.

“Your scar, it’s a few years old,” Song murmured. “I can see you’ve been hurt badly.” The words were nearly a whisper.

“It’s fine,” Zuko mumbled. “I’m over it.” The burn of her applying pressure to his shoulder making his hands curl into even tighter fists was the only thing that prevented him from brushing the scarred tissue of the left side of his face. Three years, and he still hadn’t broken the habit.

“Some wounds,” Song said, carefully, with a look in her eyes that spoke of knowing things Zuko couldn’t. “Never heal.”

“What are you trying to say?” he asked. Every part of him wanted to leap up and scream at her and leave. He was unsure why she was giving him an almost gentle sympathetic talk. “Why are you telling me this?”

She took a deep breath, eyes narrowing in concentration. “It’s still hard for me,” she said. “And I know it must be hard for you, and your sister, to live bearing the marks of the Fire Nation’s brutality.”

“I—my sister?” Zuko echoed. They had gone down a path he hadn’t expected, and he wasn’t sure why they had at all. It wasn’t like Azula had any visible burn scars.

Song blinked at him, her eyes soft and light brown. “Your…” she said. “Your eyes.”

Zuko stared at her for a moment, before he was hit with a sudden clarity. “You-you think—” he stuttered out, stumbling over the words. Song’s soft expression morphed slowly into one of concern and confusion, and Zuko spat out, “It’s not like  _ that _ .”

Song hesitated. She was wrapping his shoulder now, tightly, and Zuko tried his best not to move. “Okay,” she finally said, and he didn’t even know if they were talking about the same thing anymore. “You’re still angry,” she added. “And that’s fine. Just don’t let it get the best of you.”

Zuko cleared his throat awkwardly. “Um, as nice as this is, I came here to get healed, not for a life lesson.”

Song laughed. “You’re kind of funny, do you know that?”

No one had ever called Zuko funny before. He had no idea how to respond.

Song’s smile faded a little as Zuko shifted silently beneath her touch. “Anyways,” she murmured. “Luckily, I don’t think your injury is infected, but you need to change the bandages often and keep it clean. That means no rolling in any mud or swimming in bacteria infected water, okay?”

“I would never,” Zuko said solomonely. “I swear on my honor.” He started at the words, said before he could realize them. “I mean...I promise.” 

Song laughed. The sound was bright, and unexpected, in the silence. Zuko nearly flinched. Her hand came to touch his shoulder, lightly; Zuko did flinch this time, pulling away and grimacing as his wound stretched.

“I’m sorry,” Song murmured. 

“My bad,” Zuko responded awkwardly. He stood, wiping his hands on his clothes. “I, uh, should be getting back to my friends.”

“Of course,” Song responded. She had a look in her eyes that Zuko wasn’t used to seeing being directed towards him—it was soft, sympathetic, and concerned, but not pitying. “Just...there’s hope.”

“Hope?” Zuko echoed.

“The Avatar has returned,” Song told him, her eyes brightening. “The Fire Nation will be stopped. So don’t lose hope, alright? It’s hard, but it will get better.” She took a deep breath and added, quietly, as if reminding herself, “It always gets better.”

“Thanks,” Zuko mumbled. “For the treatment and the-the talk, I guess.”

“No problem,” Song said, packing back up her herbs. “Sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I try to reach out to people like you. To show them they’re not alone. That they don’t  _ have  _ to be.”

“I’m not alone.” 

Song cocked her head.  _ Aren’t you?  _ Her expression seemed to say. Zuko swallowed, tried to force a smile, and picked up his swords from where he had set them down in order to get treated properly, slowly and carefully slinging them back over his shoulders before setting off back into the fabric, hoping Azula hadn’t started a fire over a bad fortune.

* * *

Azula had never believed in seeing the future. Her father had taught her to only believe in what she could see; that, and the picture he had painted for the Fire Nation’s great future. Her mother had been a lowly actress, who had believed in the plays she put on and the spirits and gods they featured, despite the blasphemy of it all. Zuko had always loved those plays, but after Azula had set the third stage curtain on fire, Ursa had stopped bringing her.

Madame Wu was nothing short of a fake. Azula didn’t have much experience with what real seers were supposed to look like, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t with a face of painted makeup and cards that were chipping away. She looked like a third rate shaman trying to pass herself off as something worthwhile.

Azula wasn’t buying it. Ty Lee, on the other hand, absolutely was.

“So I pick a card and you’ll tell me my future?” she asked breathlessly, leaning forward with wide and excited eyes following Madame Wu’s every movement.

“If the cards allow it,” the fortune teller replied delicately, her painted lips curling into a slow smile.

“We don’t have time for this,” Azula said, and realized that she sounded like  _ Zuko  _ of all people. 

“We do,” Ty Lee argued. She widened her eyes at Azula almost comically and asked, “Pleaseee?”

Azula huffed and looked away. “I can’t stop you,” she sniffed.

Ty Lee had already turned away, ignoring her comments in favor of watching Madame Wu’s manicured nails shuffle the cards over and over in an annoyingly hypnotic way. 

“Pick a card,” she intoned, and Ty Lee’s fingers darted across the wooden surface. She chewed on her lip for a long moment before finally selecting one with creased corners, holding it up facedown in the air. 

“Turn it over,” the fortune teller instructed. Both of their eyes were focused intensely on the card as Ty Lee slowly flipped it over, revealing a rising sun painted in dark blue and shadowed by a rushing blackness that swallowed the edges.

“House of the Setting Sun,” Madame Wu said grimly. 

“What...what does it mean?” Ty Lee asked, gazing at it with a slight frown. 

“It means an era is ending,” the fortune teller started. “You are being faced with a choice that goes against everything you have ever stood for. The world you have known is changing, and you must choose whether to end with it, or begin again.”

Ty Lee swallowed. “Really?” she asked, at the same time Azula said,

“Anyone could have guessed that. You’re the Avatar, for Agni’s sake.”

Madame Wu glared daggers at her. “It also symbolizes the end of youth,” she continued, pointedly. “The loss of innocence, and the entrance to maturity and age.” She looked up. “You are meant to grow up, and on your own.”

Ty Lee’s smile had left her face. This made Azula unhappy, in the way she felt when someone had done something she didn’t look, and she wasn’t sure  _ why _ . Why did she care that  _ Ty Lee  _ wasn’t happy anymore? Shouldn’t that be a relief?

Unable to find an answer to those two questions, Azula decided it was in her best interest to ignore that feeling. 

“Will your friend be drawing a card?” Madame Wu asked, and Azula shook her head at the same time Ty Lee nodded, looking at her pleadingly, as if to say,  _ if I had to sit through that, so do you. _

She looked at the door Zuko had disappeared through. There had been no noises that could indicate he was in trouble, or that he was returning anytime soon—which was good, she supposed, because if he returned not fully treated, she might have to end him and that pretty apprentice herself. 

Her options, she supposed, were either to continue to sit in standoffish silence, or give in to Ty Lee’s wide eyes.

“Fine,” Azula huffed, shifting and snatching up a card before Madame Wu could shuffle them again. She turned it over and slammed it down onto the table with her palm. She pulled it back, revealing a burning phoenix trailing fire into a red sky, surrounded by a curved golden frame. 

“The Rising Phoenix,” the fortune teller said. Azula smiled; it was ironic, she supposed, or meant to be—the phoenix was her father’s sign, and one day it would be hers as well. “You are destined to burn bright and to burn fast. The phoenix cries of coming death, a warning of what is to come.”

“Is that a threat?” Azula asked. She felt the fire in her blood surge forward with a curl of her fingers, prepared to split past the seams of her skin if she needed to torch the table and the cards.

“I only speak of what I see,” Madame Wu responded delicately.

“Well I only believe what I see,” Azula responded. “And what I see is a fraud.”

“I would hate to have to ask you to leave,” Madame Wu said, her lips stretching into a strained smile. “That would be quite unfortunate.”

“It would be,” Ty Lee interjected, her hand wrapping around Azula’s arm and  _ squeezing _ —the audacity! Azula was about to break her fingers, but Ty Lee had let go as quickly as she had come, and it was only seconds later that Azula realized her hands felt, somehow, cooler, as if her fire had been dampened.

She snorted to herself. A fancy trick for a firebending novice.

“What about your volcano?” she asked, changing track and folding her arms. “Do you know when it’ll erupt?”

Madame Wu blinked. “Our volcano has been dormant for centuries,” she said, slowly, as if Azula was stupid or something. “When it thunderstorms, we will know it is no longer dormant, but it has not rained for many years.” She smiled. “Of course, I would foresee when that would happen. The village trusts me so much, that they haven’t needed to check it in years!”

“I see,” Azula replied. “What a shame.” She glanced sideways; Ty Lee was looking at her in confusion, but Azula only shrugged at her.

There was the rustling of fabric. Azula glanced up to see Zuko returning, brushing past the cloth with a grimace on his face. His shoulder had been neatly bandaged, in a much better job than either of them could do, Azula admitted grudgingly to herself. 

“Everything alright?” he asked, eyeing them both with suspicion.

“Pick a card, Zuzu,” Azula instructed airily. 

“Okay, sure,” he said, rather doubtfully, kneeling to select one after glancing at both of their faces. “Do I turn it over now?” he asked, glancing up at Madame Wu, who nodded. She was entirely too focused on him, Azula realized, her eyes beady as that awful shirshu’s from the pirate ship.

Zuko set the card down on the table. Azula’s interest was piqued as she surveyed the illustration on it, an image depicting a man hanging crookedly, painted in red. The eyes of the man were closed, bone visible through tattered clothes.

Zuko swallowed. The room had fallen very quiet. 

“The Hanging Man,” Madame Wu said. “Interesting indeed.”

“What does it mean?” Ty Lee stage whispered, her breath drifting over Azula’s neck from where she had leaned forward without the Princess noticing. Azula jerked away as subtly as possible.

“The Hanging Man signifies a betrayal,” Madame Wu said. “A mistake that ends in terrible tragedy. A creation who goes against their maker. It is an omen of negativity and failure to come.”

“Bullshit,” Zuko snapped, before Azula could do anything she had been about to. His breathing had quickened, one hand flexing around the hilts of his swords.

“The cards don’t lie,” the fortune teller replied, almost merrily. 

“Hm,” Azula said, rising to her feet gracefully. Ty Lee hurriedly followed suit, wringing her hands nervously, and Zuko rose again, frowning deeply, his brow knitted, pulling at the scarred tissue of his left eye. “Then we’ll be going.”

“You haven’t paid me,” Madame Wu interjected. 

“I paid Song,” Zuko said. For a moment, Azula was confused, until her eyes landed on the apprentice hovering at his shoulder. “But I won’t pay for an offered service without a good return.” He was breathing through his nostrils; Azula knew he was probably holding back several choice words from entering the previous statement.

Madame Wu opened her mouth, but her apprentice sank to sit next to her, laying a soothing hand on her shoulder with a short smile at Zuko. She looked a bit confused, her eyes drifting between the three of them. Azula made sure to give her a nasty smile; she wasn’t sure what exactly had taken the two of them so long, but she knew that she didn’t like this  _ Song. _

“Thank you for your help,” Zuko finally added, after a long pause, as if struggling to get the words out. “We should be going now, though.”

Song rose to her feet. “If you need a place to stay…” she started, hesitantly, a blush on her cheeks.

“We don’t,” Azula cut in, making sure to glare at her. Zuko opened his mouth, as if to argue, but ultimately closed it, bowing to her wishes. Azula smiled frostily—as he should. 

Without waiting for them, she turned o her heel and swept out the door, lighting one of the annoying hanging fabrics on fire as she did. She heard Zuko hiss, and Ty Lee yelp out an apology as she scrambled after her. She had probably put it out.

“—Hey!” Ty Lee yelled, spinning out on a marble of air and landing with a burst in front of Azula. She pinwheeled frantically for a moment or two, until Azula took pity on her and grabbed one of her flailing arms, pulling her forward and righting her. Zuko hurried out behind them.

“What?” she snapped. “It was the least I could do.”

“Huh? Oh, not about that,” Ty Lee said breathlessly. “I was just wondering why you asked about the volcano?”

“Are you asking me?” Azula raised an eyebrow. Ty Lee nodded. Azula sighed. “It’s primed to explode,” she explained.

Ty Lee gasped, hands flying to cover her mouth. “We have to warn them!” 

“ _ No,  _ we need to get out of here,” Azula said, crossing her arms. “I don’t know if you realize, but these people won’t believe us anyways. They’ve been tricked into a sense of compliancy after living peacefully all these years.”

“You don’t  _ know  _ that,” Ty Lee argued, pouting.

Zuko sighed, stepping in between the two of them placatingly. “How do you know, Lala?” he asked.

“I can feel it,” she responded. It really should have been obvious, but Zuko was the type who needed things spelled out. “I told you, since the dragons, I’ve been more in tune with the fire around me.”

“I didn’t know that meant feeling when volcanoes  _ are about to erupt, Azula _ ,” Zuko said. Azula only cast him a disinterested look; she didn’t have time for him to work out his angry emotions. 

“We should leave,” she reiterated..

“No,” Zuko said, surprisingly firmly. “Ty Lee’s right. We need to evacuate the village if what you’re saying is true.”

Azula examined her nails. “It’s their own folly for trusting a fraudulent fortune teller.”

“People believe what they want to,” Zuko murmured, softly. 

“Exactly,” Azula said. “So it doesn’t matter what we say or do.”

“We can try,” Ty Lee repeated, firmly, and then she was off in the air with her glider out, circling towards the town. Zuko blinked after her, then sighed, starting to follow. Azula grabbed his arm.

“She’ll be back soon,” she said.

“How much time do we have?” he asked. “Until it erupts.”

Azula closed her eyes and concentrated, feeling the lava bubbling beneath the cracked earth. “An hour,” she finally decided. “Maybe more. Maybe less.”

Zuko exhaled and rubbed his hands over his face. “Is one peaceful shore visit too much to ask for?” he muttered.

“Probably.”

Ty Lee landed in front of them with a loud thump, dust flying up. Her fists were clenched. “They wouldn’t listen,” she said, shaking her head in slow disbelief. “They told me it was impossible and that I should ‘stop trying to incite fear, even if I am the Avatar.’”

Azula snorted. “Told you.”

Ty Lee fiddled with her staff for a minute, lips pursed, before her head snapped up, eyes brightening. “I have an idea,” she breathed. “Madame Wu said that a thunderstorm signified the volcano was about to erupt, right? So, maybe, if I generate a storm, that could make the villagers realize they have to evacuate, right?”

Zuko and Azula exchanged doubtful looks. “You could try,” Zuko amended. “But I don’t. You’ve hardly mastered firebending, and do you  _ know  _ how to airbend a storm? Doesn’t that require waterbending?”

Ty Lee frowned, then finally answered with, “I’m the Avatar,” as if that was the solution to all her problems.

“Let her try,” Azula said. Ty Lee had evidently stopped listening to them, turning and sinking into a meditative position, fists bumping together. Zuko sighed underneath his breath.

They watched her for a few moments in silence, Azula tracking the volcano and testing out the limits of her newfound sense, and Zuko pacing restlessly. 

The wind started to move, slowly picking up around them. Leaves rustled, rippling across the dusty road. Azula looked up, seeing dark clouds gathering on the horizon. In front of them, Ty Lee’s brow knitted in further concentration and they came closer, shadows being cast across the town.

“Is she actually doing it?” Zuko breathed. He looked like he didn’t know whether to be amazed or worried. Azula said nothing, only watched. Sweat was beading on the airbender’s forehead, her body starting to tremble as the wind picked up.

The clouds came closer. Ty Lee pressed her fists together even tighter, her knuckles turning white from the pressure. Azula found herself leaning in closer, watching her intently. What was it like, to be able to control the air? She knew fire was related closely to oxygen; it relied on it, after all, but fire was in and of itself a much more vicious element. 

The clouds darkened. Ty Lee’s face clenched, and then she cried out, her from. falling apart and the clouds and wind disappearing as quickly as they had come. She scrambled to keep herself from falling.

“What happened?” Zuko asked, at her side in an instant. Azula frowned. Her brother had gone soft for the Avatar quickly; she wasn’t used to not being the only one he cared about. Sure, Zuzu had cared for his crew, but he hadn’t been close with them. He hadn’t been like  _ this _ , and she disliked it the longer they journeyed and the more worried Zuko became over Ty Lee.

“I couldn’t control it,” Ty Lee muttered, leaning back on her heels. “I was  _ so  _ close, but even though I got the clouds to condense, I couldn’t make it turn into water, and then I just...lost it.”

“It’s fine,” Zuko said, but Azula could tell he was frustrated. She found it odd that he cared so much. She expected the self sacrificing, hero complex from Ty Lee, but not from her brother. He had always just looked out for himself, and then for her.

That wasn’t strictly true, Azula admitted to herself. But in the past years, Zuko had been trying his best  _ not  _ to care too much about other people. She had thought he would be better at it by now, given what it had cost him last time. (Not that it should have cost him anything at all.)

“So all you did was waste time,” she criticized. Ty Lee shrugged helplessly. Azula sighed. She opened her mouth, only for a tremor to ripple through the earth, nearly throwing her into her hands and knees. Zuko cursed, halfway between a yelp and a resentment. 

“We are definitely out of time,” he said, glancing up at the convulsing volcano. Azula could see the brimming red of the bubbling lava, splashing up and around. In minutes, it would explode, raining down ash and volcanic rock and burning hot lava that would melt anyone it touched.

“Zuzu, you evacuate the villagers on the beast,” Azula instructed. “The Avatar and I will try to hold the lava off for as long as possible.”

Zuko laughed. “No way,” he said.

“Are you doubting me?” she asked calmly. The smile died on his lips.

“You’re serious.”

“And you should be too, so get moving.” Azula cracked her knuckles. “Think you could get us up there, airbender?”

Ty Lee gaped at her. “Yeah-Yeah definitely,” she stuttered. “You’ll need to hold on tight, though.” She whistled, once for Moshi, and then spun out her staff, transforming it into a glider. She held out a hand to Azula, who glanced at it for a long moment, then sighed and took it. Technically, she could have gotten up there on her own, but she didn’t want to waste her energy. 

As they set off into the air, the sky bison landing next to Zuko behind them, Azula watched her brother start to head into town as another, larger earthquake sent people spilling to their knees and house’s foundations cracking. Screams started to rise in the air. Azula smiled to herself, then focused her attention on dropping forward onto the convulsing volcano rock. It felt like it was burning through her shoes, and from how Ty Lee was dancing, maybe it had already burned through her own.

“Oh,” Ty Lee breathed, peering into the pit of lava. “What are we going to do about that?”

“We’ll bend it,” Azula said. Ty Lee gaped at her again, jaw dropping.

“How?”

A burst of lava erupted into the air and Azula slammed into a bending stance, spinning her hands and thrusting it back down.

“Like that,” she explained.

“I don’t know if I—” Ty Lee started, but the ground was shaking and the lava was seconds away from spilling over.

“No tome!” Azula snapped. “Get to the other side,  _ now _ .” She didn’t add,  _ I don’t think I can do this on my own,  _ because that was a weakness she couldn’t afford to admit, but maybe Ty Lee had understood it anyways, because she followed suit anyways, darting away.

The volcano erupted and Azula twisted in her spot, using every bit of the fire in her blood to connect to the lava. She thrust her hands forward, channeling every bit of her energy into the movement, and felt the lava stir beneath her. The ground slipped beneath her feet, but Azula only ground forward and pushed. 

She opened her eyes. The lava, she realized, was a fiery wall in front of her, splashing and roaring, but  _ stopped _ . Azula let a laugh bubble put, despite the strain she could feel on her whole body. She had  _ done it _ . Lava was bending to  _ her  _ will.

Azula didn’t know how long she held it. She couldn’t see Ty Lee and didn’t know how Zuko was doing evacuating the village, until someone was screaming her name and she glanced up, losing her concentration.

The lava crashed down, but Azula was already being whisked away, an arm pressing her close to Ty Lee’s chest as the airbender girl hurtled them both out of range on her glider, streamlining through the sky. Azusa was aware of how exhausted she felt, yet her heart was practically beating out of her chest with excitement. 

“We just fought a volcano!” Ty Lee yelled above the wind. Despite the sweat and ash she was drowned in, her eyes were filled with bright excitement. 

Azula laughed deliriously. “We did,” she said back. Agni, she had just done what Roku had done and lived, this time. (Roku, who was her great grandfather, a voice that sounded like that damned  _ Ursa  _ reminded her gently.) 

The wind felt good on their faces, and if Azula admitted to herself, it felt somewhat nice to use an arm holding her close. Holding her safe. It felt like no one had done that in a long time. 

She liked it. She didn’t want it to end. Azula wasn’t sure  _ why  _ though.

* * *

After two days over the arctic sea, Zuko first spotted the blue ships. They floated on the dark blue ocean, silk blue sails fluttering over polished wood, hardly distinguishable from the ice floes that surrounded them. In the distance, a wall of ice rose in scraping white waves, glinting in the sun. A waterbender creation, Zuko was sure of it—he had heard of the Northern Water Tribe, but nothing had prepared him for a structure as magnificent as that.

Ty Lee gasped when he pointed it out, her breath frosting out in a cloud. “Wow,” she breathed. “My friends used to tell me about how glorious the Water Tribe was, but I never imagined it could look like  _ that _ .”

“It’s a bunch of ice,” Azula snapped. “Meltable.” 

Ty Lee frowned and sat back. “Speaking of which,” she said. “Why hasn’t it…”

“Been melted yet?” Zuko finished. He crossed his arms. “Well, it’s about to be, if Zhao is right. But the Northern Water Tribe declared itself a neutral territory towards the beginning of the war, when the Fire Nation had started to advance on the Water Tribes in hopes of taking the waterbenders away. They isolated themselves; let the Fire Nation run the Southern Water Tribe into the ground in exchange for their own safety.” He paused. The Northern Water Tribe had always been greater than their Southern brothers, if greater meant they had a centralized government in relation to the Southern Water Tribe’s multiple villages and chiefs. It had been easy for Zuko’s great grandfather and grandfather to pick off the Southern Water Tribe village by village; by the time one had heard of the downfall of the other, the only thing left had been smoking ashes and ice liable to break at any moment.

Ty Lee exhaled slowly, gripping the reins tightly in her hands. “They didn’t help?” she asked.

“They looked out for themselves,” Azula responded. “And look at them now.” She swept a hand over the fleet they were hiding from and the city of ice beyond it. “They’ve become a nation of their own.”

“And this is the only place to find waterbenders?” Ty Lee asked. She looked a little doubtful after hearing the story, and Zuko felt the same. He didn’t trust easily, and the Northern Water Tribe was already rubbing him the wrong way.

“Unless you’re looking for a dead one,” Azula told her with a sharp smile.

“Okay, then!” Ty Lee exclaimed, turning away and snapping the reins. They started downwards with a flop of Moshi’s tail, and Zuko found himself once again doubting how stable their flying sky bison really was, grabbing the edges of the saddle to prevent himself from sliding forward and maybe into thin air.

He heard yells from down below, and hissed, ducking down as a blast of water went over their heads. There were, probably, nicer ways to make an entrance, ones that didn’t make it seem like they were under attack.

“We come in peace!” Ty Lee yelled, and then Moshi landed on the deck of the main ship, nearly sending them all tumbling in multiple directions. In a minute, water had yanked both him and Azula from their positions on the saddle and sent them to the deck, where it froze over them, forcing them into kneeling positions.

Azula immediately lit up, Zuko knew more on instinct than anything else. The ice melted around her, the action of it dampening the wood likely the only reason the ship they were on hadn’t caught fire. This, of course, only caused further outrage amidst the, albeit confused, Northern warriors. Zuko struggled against the icy restraints as best as he could, trying to angle his body enough to dislodge the knife in his boot.

“Wait!” Ty Lee cried out helplessly, dodging a spear. “I’m the Avatar! I—” She was cut off as a whip of water blindsided her. Azula snarled, hands alight with blue fire, and Zuko felt the cold touch of a blade to his throat. 

“Everyone STOP!” Ty Lee screamed, her hands flying out in a whirl, a tornado of wind whipping through the air and slamming Water Tribe warriors against the railings, Azula flipping backwards and digging her spiked heels into the boat to keep her balance. Zuko hissed, scrabbling to not break his  _ other  _ wrist.

“A little help, Lala?” he asked with a grimace in the quiet, as Ty Lee floated back down, her hair taking a moment longer than usual to settle under the weight of the gravitational pull.

She glanced at him briefly. “Sure.” A flick of her fingers, and the ice had melted. Zuko sat back, rubbing at his wrists and checking his shoulder injury with prodding fingers—it had been yanked in all the wrong ways, and he didn’t want to disrupt the careful healing he had been undergoing.

The warriors were getting back to their feet. Zuko rose quickly, grabbing his swords and swinging them to his hip, where he could rest his hands on them without actually drawing them. He slid back to stand back to back with Azula, eyes watching all corners of the ship.

A man stepped forward. He wore blue colors and white furs, with a weathered but strong face. He was tall and had an impressive bearing; this, Zuko knew, was the leader, at least on this ship. He held up a hand, and the warriors fell back behind him, still in defensive positions, but not about to attack. At least not immediately.

“The Avatar,” he repeated, doubtful. 

Ty Lee nodded, grabbing her staff and stepping forward. The warriors on either side of the man tensed, weapons bristling, and she stepped back, holding up her hands. “We come in peace,” she repeated. Azula scoffed, and Zuko rammed his elbow into her side. She shot him a warning glance, which he returned in force, something unsaid passing between them, hopefully meaning the same on both sides.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of my return,” Ty Lee began. “I need to learn waterbending, and this is the only place where I can.” 

“I’m Arnook, Chief of the Northern Water Tribe,” the man introduced. “And we are, of course, honored to host the Avatar.” He paused, wetting his lips. “However, we cannot allow your Fire Nation  _ companions  _ to accompany you.”

Zuko sighed underneath his breath.

Ty Lee furrowed her brow. “They’re my friends,” she said. “And they’re my teachers. They go with me, or I don’t go at all.”

A part of Zuko wanted to tell her not to bother. Another part of him knew that they couldn’t let Ty Lee go alone, no matter how much he wasn’t looking forward to being trapped in a city literally made of snow and ice.

“Still, we cannot allow Fire Nation spies into—”

“We’re not spies,” Zuko interjected, venom seeping into his tone. “We’re traitors to the Fire Nation, and we’re here to keep her safe. You have nothing to worry about.” 

Well, he actually had many things to worry about if he was the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe, namely Zhao’s upcoming attack, but Zuko didn’t think it was wise to mention an unknown attack when he had just said that they weren’t spies. 

Arnook narrowed his eyes at him. Zuko straightened, nudging Azula back a half step so that he could stand in front of her. His eyes fell on Zuko’s scar; it was the first thing anyone noticed, and Zuko could only hope that, maybe, this time it would actually work in their favor. 

“I see,” he finally said. “Very well. We will allow these two to accompany the Avatar into the city,  _ but  _ if we see any indication to have reasonable suspicion, you  _ will  _ be put on trial and imprisoned.”

Azula laughed. “Harsh,” she murmured beneath her breath. 

“Necessary,” Zuko told her out of the corner of his mouth. “Now put out your fire before you start another fight.”

“I’d win,” she said, unhelpfully. 

“That doesn’t matter,” Zuko said, even though she would. She put out her fire, but Zuko kept his hands on the hilt of his swords all the same. They were both ready to fight, even with Ty Lee chatting up the various warriors with questions and exclamations about the state of their armor. The ships had, evidently, set course for the wall of ice, rerouting themselves. Zuko didn’t ask what they had been doing going away, but he wondered about it.

There was a chance that, as soon as they arrived, he and Azula would both be apprehended. Zuko didn’t know if this Arnook was an honest man, but he knew that it was a trait that was hard to find, especially in leaders, as leaders often lied. It was in the job description. Zuko had grown up with one of them; he knew what leaders did to survive.

Ty Lee reappeared in front of them with a flourish of air. Zuko wondered if he was the only person who was  _ cold  _ there; Azula had been radiating warmth for days now, and Ty Lee looked like nothing bothered her. Zuko, on the other hand, felt numb all over, and had started checking his toes for signs of frostbite. The wind was biting, as if there was ice in the very air.

“Come on,” she said. “We’re going to fly Moshi over the wall while they dock.” She was excited, bouncing on her tiptoes. That was something about Ty Lee: she took everything in as if it was new and the most interesting thing, ever, to have been witnessed. In the long stretches of time they had spent flying, she had taken to badgering them—well, mostly Zuko, as she had soon discovered Azula wouldn’t be nice for long—with endless questions about the world and how things had changed, like Fire Nation foods and Earth Kingdom rumbles. Some of what she asked, Zuko had never heard of, which had led to her explaining them in great detail to him. 

“From one prison into the next,” Zuko remarked as he pulled himself up by grabbing onto Moshi’s fur. He patted the side of the sky bison once he reached the saddle in apology. 

“I think it will be fun?” Ty Lee said, even though it was more a question, as if she was checking on what they thought.

Azula exhaled a wisp of fire and smoke. “We’re not here to have fun,” she said. “We're here so that you can learn waterbending.”

“We can do both,” Ty Lee told her seriously. Moshi rose into the air with a thump, and Zuko found that he was, for once, actually glad to be in the air and off the Water Tribe ship. At least they were out of harm’s way. For now. 

They crossed over the wall of ice, Ty Lee waving to the guards as she did so, and Zuko leaned over the edge of the saddle dangerously to get a good look at the city beneath them. It was unlike anything he had the ability to imagine: sweeps of ice were carved into canals that cut deep grooves throughout the waterside city. The buildings were so white it was nearly blinding, and Zuko had to squint and look away from the magnificent craftsmanship. His father loved to paint the Water Tribes as no better than savages, but this spoke of a highly advanced civilization, one that rivaled the Fire Nation in terms of city planning.

Moshi started to go down again, landing outside what must be the palace. It was much more intricate than any other structure, with a swooping dome and a set of stairs that glimmered all the way up. Zuko climbed down and nearly slipped, his slick Fire Nation shoes unaccustomed to finding purchase on ice. It was hard; he doubted even Azula could melt through it.

The doors slid open at the top, and Zuko craned his neck to see a form appear at the top, hurrying down the steps. As they came closer, he saw it was a girl, dressed in thick winter furs dyed dark purple. Unlike the guards surrounding her, her hair was shock white, swinging at her sides.

She stopped at the foot at the steps, her lips parting as she looked at them, before she quickly sunk into a bow, demurely lowering her eyes. “Greetings, Avatar and companions. I, Princess Yue of the Northern Water Tribe, am honored to welcome you into my home. Come, my father has sent word that I am to take you inside. He’ll be with us shortly.”

“You’re royalty?” Ty Lee asked with a blink, looking glad to have actual human companionship her age that wasn’t Zuko or Azula. They weren’t very good company, so Zuko didn’t blame her.

Yue spared her a smile, her hands slipping into the sleeves of her robes. The loops of her hair swung in front of her face briefly as she turned around, starting to ascend the steps with her dark purple train trailing her. “Of a sort,” she said. 

“Does that mean you’ll be the Chief one day?” Ty Lee continued, subtly shoving aside one of the guards to walk side by side with Yue. Azula and Zuko followed them, Zuko watching them carefully as Azula glared at any guard that tried to get a little bit closer to them than necessary. 

Yue laughed. “My future husband will be the Chief. Women don’t assume positions of power such as that here.” She wore that same, small smile on her face as she spoke. 

Ty Lee’s face fell. Azula scoffed beneath her breath, shaking her head. “How outdated,” she murmured in Zuko’s ear.

“So you’re not…” Ty Lee frowned, pressing her lips together.

Yue laughed again, delicately. “I’m an advisor to my father,” she said. “It is a high honor to be in such a position of trust.”

“Oh,” Ty Lee said, smiling. “You must be really smart, then.”

“I’m honored you assume that,” Yue replied. The doors opened once more, with hardly a scrape as they slid across the ice. Zuko was prepared for them to go straight to what he assumed to be the throne room, or the Council room, or whatever, which was right ahead of them, but Yue peeled off to the side, saying, “This way.”

Brow furrowing, Zuko followed her, noticing how some of the guards peeled away after Yue made a hand motion at them. Maybe it had all been a trap, he thought as they delved deeper into the building, turning through a number of passages. He was sure he could find his way out if he wanted too—he had already memorized the way, replaying it in his mind as they went just in case—but he didn’t know what the odds would be in a waterbender domain, even with two firebenders—well, technically a firebender and a half, maybe two, Zuko wasn’t sure how reliant Ty Lee was, yet—on his side.

“In here,” Yue said, stepping back to let them enter. Zuko gripped his swords tightly, feeling the engraved hilt dig uncomfortably into the palms of his hand. He tensed as he stepped in, prepared for them to be ambushed, only to find himself in what looked to be an infirmary. There were several beds set up in the vicinity, low burning candles holding vigil by the empty bedsides.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Azula inquired sharply. 

Yue stepped forward, the door closing behind her. “Your, ah, brother? is injured. Before we get you warmer clothes, I thought that I would take care of it.”

Zuko let go of the swords at his side slowly, wincing as he had to unattach his palm from them. “I’m fine,” he replied. 

Yue let her hands free, flicking her fingers. Water spun into the air from a basin near one of the empty beds, turning into an orb that hung between her brown hands. 

“You’re a waterbender!” Ty Lee exclaimed, her mouth hanging open as she watched the water move. 

“I’m a healer,” Yue said, and it sounded almost like a correction to Zuko, though he wasn’t sure why. She turned to him. “Sit,” she said, the water moving with her hands as she gestured to the bed. 

Zuko sat, even though he didn’t really want to. Half of them thought this would be a waste of time, but the other half wasn’t going to turn down free services, even if they came at a later cost. His shoulder had been aching lately, too, as had his face and his burn, making his neck tense and giving him migraines. He figured it had to do with the cold weather; it had gotten like that when he had been down in the Southern Pole before as well.

“Ah,” Yue said, kneeling in front of him. “Your shirt, please.” Zuko blinked, then realized she was asking him to take it off. He obliged, albeit a bit awkwardly, the cold air stinging his pale skin as he did so. He shivered, teeth chattering a bit. 

Yue’s eyes focused, and she gently peeled the bandages off his shoulder, flattening her palm, with the water following suit and elongating into a smooth oval. Zuko watched it glow a bright blue against the angry red of his wound, a soothing feeling drifting over him. He watched the wound start to close, the muscle being physically knitted back together, in fascination.

“I take it you’ve never seen waterbending being used as a healing method, have you?” Yue murmured, glancing up at him, her soft brown eyes glinting.

“I haven’t met many waterbenders,” Zuko answered honestly.

“Well, I’m sure the only waterbenders in the Caldera are dead ones,” Yue replied. Zuko blinked, taken aback, but she was still smiling, and he wasn’t sure if it was a guarded insult or simply a fact.

“Yeah, probably,” he mumbled. Yue leaned back, the water whisked away. “Can I see your wrist?” she asked, reaching and picking up his hand before he could answer. Zuko flinched back as the water returned, wrapping around the sore bone, seeping through his skin. “Does that feel better?” Yue asked.

“Uh, yeah, thanks,” Zuko said, cautiously testing it out. “How’d you know?”

“I’m a healer,” Yue replied. “I know many things.” She glanced up at him. “I’m afraid I can’t do anything about your scar—”

“There’s nothing to be done about it,” Zuko interrupted. “It’s been like this for a while.”

“Still, I—”

“Your Highness, the Chief is requesting you and the Avatar’s presence.” A man opened the door, stepping in and suavely not so much helping as he was pulling Yue to her feet.

“Thank you, Hahn, we’ll be on our way shortly,” Yue told him, quickly ducking out from under his hand as Zuko scrambled for his shirt.

“I’ll escort you,” Hahn insisted, taking her elbow again. “You are my betrothed, after all.”

Azula made a disgusted noise. Yue hid her pained smile with her signature shy one, murmuring, “Of course.”

“You’re engaged?” Ty Lee asked in surprise. “But you’re so young!”

“I’m sixteen,” Yue replied. “And Hahn is the son of one of our most respected generals. It is a match that will be very beneficial for our marriage.”

Azula looked like she was about to laugh in both of their faces again, so Zuko stepped on her foot. Hard. As someone who abhorred all emotions relating to the l-word (re: love), Azula had always laughed at the concept of marriage. Their parents had held a loveless marriage; something Zuko knew would be eventually required of him and his sister. With royalty, it often was. However, now was not the time to shun certain customs, no matter how much of a dolt Hahn resembled.

“I see,” Ty Lee said. “The Air Nomads always said to love who you love, after all.” Zuko covered his mouth with his hand and coughed in order to dislodge the laugh caught in his throat. He wasn’t sure if Ty Lee was really being non sequitur because of her flighty brain, or if she was doing the thing she did where she said proverbial things with hidden meanings. It was hard to tell with Ty Lee.

“They were truly an open minded people,” Yue replied humbly. “I’m sure you miss them.”

Ty Lee shrugged, her shoulders shrinking in on herself. “Yeah,” she said. “Even if it has been a century.”

They rounded the corner and were back at the entrance to the throne hall, which was really more of an amphitheater of sorts. Men had gathered, taking seats of ice that ran around the room in a semicircle that rose taller than all of them. Zuko felt that it was a space designed to make him feel small; he was no stranger to that tactic, either, though. 

Chief Arnook stood at the center of the room. Yue’s fiance led her up the steps to a seat beside him, which she took gracefully, lowering her eyes and slipping her hands into her sleeves once again. Hahn took up the chair next to her with ease, scooting a bit closer. Zuko retraced a step, taking up position at his sister’s side. Ty Lee stood in front of them, ready to address the men in front of her, who were all gazing at her with varying degrees of suspicion to disinterest.

“We’ve heard rumors of the Avatar returning,” Chief Arnook began. “But none that said you would be coming to us.”

“As I said before, I came here seeking a waterbending master for me to learn from, so I can master the four elements,” Ty Lee explained. Several of the men in the room scoffed, muttering under their breath to one another, Ty Lee blinked a bit nervously. “...Please?”

One of the men coughed louder. Chief Arnook shifted. “Women of the Northern Water Tribe do not typically learn any skills except healing.”

Azula raised her eyebrow. Zuko also raised his own. Ty Lee blinked.

“Um…” she said. “Good thing I’m not Northern Water Tribe?” She glanced back at them nervously. On the stand, Yue was looking down at her feet quietly, a genial smile on her face. Zuko had heard of how backwards the Water Tribes were, but he hadn’t thought they were  _ that  _ backwards. The Fire Nation at least had the decency to treat women with respect.

“Still, I cannot allow a  _ girl  _ to learn the secrets of—” a man with a long beard started to say, severe wrinkles outlining his face.

“And  _ who  _ are  _ you _ ?” Ty Lee interrupted, crossing her arms. “Before you get any further.”

“This is Master Pakku,” Arnook explained. “Our most talented waterbender.” 

Zuko looked at the man again. He was old, but he looked spry, his hair long and white, though he was bald around his crown. He looked, in fact, like someone Zuko’s Uncle would have had over for a game of pai sho.

(Zuko missed his Uncle. He missed the stupid pai sho games and how he had never been able to win, even when he had cheated. He missed the stupid rules and his Uncle’s advice and the gifts he had used to send alongside the short letters from when he had been at Ba Sing Se. He missed the Uncle that had existed when Lu Ten was still alive, just as he missed his cousin, and wished there was more than just a legacy to remember both of them by.)

Master Pakku cleared his throat. “I will not teach a girl,” he said. “Even if she  _ is  _ the Avatar.”

Ty Lee’s eyes widened. Azula stepped forward, a fist clenched, but Zuko yanked her back, hissing at how hot her skin was. 

“With all due respect,” Zuko said. “She’s the Avatar, and—”

“Foreigners cannot speak without permission!” another man chimed in, bristling all over. And, when Azula opened her mouth, “Women can’t speak without permission either!”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Ty Lee demanded, looking a bit fed up. “Stand here?” The wind picked up around her; her fists were clenched. 

The room quieted. Ty Lee exhaled, her cheeks pinkening. “I came here to learn waterbending,” she started. “And I’m going to learn waterbending. It would be more beneficial for me to learn it from a master than on my own, but I’ll learn it that way if I have to.”

Chief Arnook paused. “You are welcome to stay here as long as you need,” he said. “But our tribe has customs to follow.”

“Then I think we’re done here,” Zuko said, grabbing Ty Lee’s arm and pulling her and Azula out of the room. 

As soon as they had left, he let them both go, met with identical ‘heys!’ Ty Lee looked like she had worked herself up considerably, exhaling big gusts of wind that made Zuko’s face colder than it had been before, but at least he was feeling  _ something _ there. 

“They—unbelievable!—and I need to learn waterbending—’women can’t talk without permission’ what are we supposed to do, listen? Last time I checked, time is supposed to change things, not further regress—”

“Ty Lee,” Zuko said. She was still ranting, her hair beginning to stand up as she started pacing faster and faster, occasionally walking a few steps on air. 

“I think it’s kind of funny,” Azula chimed in next to him, snickering. 

“Ty  _ Lee _ !” Zuko yelled, and she stopped, turning to him with a look of perplexion.

“What?”

“Can you calm down?” Zuko asked. “The Northern Water Tribe is famous for their ‘traditional values,’ but I didn’t think they would be  _ that  _ traditional. No other place is like the Air Nomads were, where everyone was equal and whatever.”

“Still…” Ty Lee trailed off, looking at her boots. “I’m the Avatar, and they don’t want to teach me waterbending. I  _ need  _ to learn waterbending.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Zuko promised, already thinking of how he could make a deal with the information he currently had. 

“Maybe we shouldn’t inform them about Zhao,” Azula mused. 

“No, Lala,” Zuko said, nudging her shoulder. “They’re in danger.”

“They’re our enemies,” Azula pointed out.

“They’re not  _ our  _ enemies,” Zuko stated. “Maybe the Fire Lord considers them  _ his  _ enemies, but they’re not  _ ours _ . Not anymore. Right?” 

He glanced at his sister, her bronze eyes meeting his gold. She lifted her shoulders, slowly and deliberately. “Whatever you say, Zuzu.” It wasn’t a yes. It was barely even an agreement. Zuko felt his own shoulders slump back down in defeat. 

The doors opened, and Chief Arnook stepped out, Yue behind him, wearing the same docile expression she had slipped on as soon as she had taken her seat at the council. Zuko immediately slipped back into a deferative position, lowering his head deeply.

“My apologies for our sudden departure,” he said. 

“You didn’t seem very sorry to leave,” Arnook said. Zuko tensed, every hollow bone in his body singing the reminder of what happened to graves he dug with his own two hands. But when he looked up, there was a smile on the man’s face, wrinkles around his eyes showing. “It’s been a long time since someone has addressed me with such fire.”

Azula laughed and murmured, quietly, “Zuko’s the only one without fire here.”

Zuko stepped forward. “We have good intelligence that the Fire Nation is currently planning an attack on the Northern Water Tribe.”

Chief Arnook’s face paled. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“A man named Admiral Zhao should be leading it,” Zuko said. “I don’t know when they’ll be here, but it will be soon.”

The Chief shook his head. “Nobody has breached the Northern Water Tribe in over a century.”

“Because no one has  _ tried _ ,” Zuko responded. “Look, I can’t tell you more than that, but you need to be prepared. And it would benefit you to have the Avatar on your side, then.” He looked back at Ty Lee meaningfully.

“Father,” Yue spoke up, voice a quiet whisper. “I believe it would be beneficial for the Avatar to learn waterbending from Master Pakku.”

Chief Arnook looked back at his daughter for a long moment. Finally, he said, “I will discuss it with him again.” He turned back to the three of them. “Thank you for your information. Yue will show you to your rooms.” He eyed them. “You need warmer clothing.” 

With that, he turned and disappeared back into the building, leaving Yue standing outside with them. She smiled.

“I apologize,” she said, giving them a dip of her head. “My people’s traditions are uncommon compared to those of other nations, I’ve heard.”

“No, it’s not your fault,” Ty Lee said instantly. “Thank you for putting a good word in with your father.”

Yue’s expression turned slightly wistful. “Of course,” she said. “I hope you can learn true waterbending. Master Pakku is an excellent teacher, I’ve heard.”

“I’m sure,” Ty Lee said, though she looked slightly disappointed at the prospect. “I don’t think he likes me—or  _ us _ —very much though.”

“They aren’t used to girls with large personalities,” Yue explained. “Traditional ways and values are very important to us Water Tribe; we aren’t used to outsiders.”

“Perhaps because you’ve spent the last one hundred years locked away?” Azula supplied with a sharp smile.

“Your rooms are this way,” Yue said in lieu of answering, smoothly redirecting them. It was getting dark, though Zuko didn’t know if that meant it was late or early—everything set and rose differently in this part of the world. She led them skillfully along the paths carved out of snow and ice, skirts swishing across the surface. 

Zuko shivered as he walked, until Azula bumped her shoulder against his and warmth flooded through his veins in a sudden shock. It wasn’t much, but his veins, which had been frozen over, were not thawing at least a little bit.

He opened his mouth to say thanks, thought better of it, and then wondered if the fact that he kept holding back was stunting their growth as siblings.

He still didn’t say thank you. Azula was intelligent in many ways, but not when it came to kindness. Neither of them were.

“You’ll be staying in here for the duration of your visit,” Yue said, stepping back to let them enter a widely scoped room of ice and furs. It was connected to the edges of the palace they had just been in—Zuko assumed it was the guest quarters, or something of the sort. Zuko was surprised to find that it was relatively warmer when he stepped inside, despite the chipped ice that decorated the ceiling and walls. 

“You’ll find clothes in the chests next to your beds,” Yue continued. “If they don’t fit, just find me, and I’ll have someone alter them.

There was a knock on the half closed door, and a young man appeared, his hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. “Your Highness,” he said to Yue, dropping into a flustered bow.

“What is it?” Yue asked, her brows furrowing together.

“Master Pakku sends words that the Avatar is to begin her lessons with him at dawn tomorrow morning,” the youth told her, his eyes skittering over to where Ty Lee stood, noticeable by her clothes alone, even if one decided to ignore the blue tattoos and gray eyes. Eyes that, right now, were widening into surprise and excitement, her pupils like silver coins.

“Really?” she demanded, whirling forward and landing in front of the man, who startled back like a rabbit. 

“Of course,” he whispered, sweat beading on his forehead. “Master Pakku told me myself.” 

“Awesome!” Ty Lee cried, clapping her hands together and spinning away on a gust of wind. The air seemed to have picked up on her positive energy, getting bouncier and warmer, like a cool summer breeze almost as she spun. 

“You may go,” Yue murmured to the servant boy, who gratefully ducked away. Then, she turned to face them all, bowing and saying, “I will also take my leave. Please, do not hesitate to call for the guards. They’ll be stationed outside. You can rest safely here.”

“Thank you,” Zuko told her. Azula forgo words, dipping her head coldly in the other Princess’ direction. Ty Lee swung around and practically sang out her thanks, grabbing Yue’s hands as she did, to the waterbender’s surprise and Zuko’s chagrin.

Then the Princess took her leave, leaving the three of them behind in the now occupied, yet still unfamiliar place.

Azula disappeared into the adjoined room, a clip in her steps. Ty Lee took the bed, flopping out across the furs and sighing, then standing up and announcing she was going to go check on Moshi. Zuko found himself left alone in the center of the space, surrounded by more blue and snow than he had likely ever been.

* * *

Ty Lee took to waterbending like a fish in water, picking it up as easily as one might a flower from the ground. She spent all her waking hours learning and practicing, coming back to show the two of them whatever new tricks she learned, even managing to douse Azula once, which had made the other girl light up with blue flames.

Her teacher, Master Pakku, was the source of endless complaints, though, with Ty Lee more often than not storming home and releasing her pent up rage as she bounced around on an airball restlessly. From what Zuko could gather, he continued to be misogynistic, sexist, and a believer in the traditional patriarchy that Ty Lee hadn’t even known existed until she entered the Northern Water Tribe.

Still, she seemed happier, as if she had finally found a purpose, and Zuko couldn’t blame her.

The one downside to Ty Lee’s happiness, though, was Azula. 

His sister, Zuko had noticed, had become increasingly colder and quieter as the days passed. She glowered whenever Ty Lee talked, tried to melt things regularly ‘for fun,’ and was brusque with anyone who got in her way. 

Finally, Zuko confronted her from where she was watching Ty Lee’s practice from a distance with a frown. He had found that she tended to do that sometimes—scope out the lessons and study the waterbending. Zuko, too, had watched a few, if only to practice some of the movements with his dual dao at night, when the glint of his swords wouldn’t bother anyone. (They didn’t like to see someone from the Fire Nation armed, even if he wasn’t a firebender.) Azula, he knew, rose with the sun and meditated—as did Zuko, when he wasn’t corralling Ty Lee—and Zuko had a sneaking suspicion she was also applying waterbending tactics to her firebending, but he wasn’t sure when, or how, and he knew she would never admit to it if he asked.

“Go away,” Azula said, as soon as he sat down. She had grudgingly put on a blue parka lined with fur, the hood nearly covering her whole face when she put it up, and while she had taken off her armor finally, she had kept the pink and red clothes beneath it, her capped sleeves peeking out, pants disappearing into the thick fur of her boots. She looked almost comical, though Zuko never dared to tell her out loud. He knew what the clothes meant to Azula, even if they were just clothes.

Zuko, on the other hand, had washed his Blue Spirit garb and his dirty Fire Nation clothes, but hadn’t put them back on, though they were resting in his bag. He had needed to put on as much Water Tribe clothing as he could in order to keep the cold out, donning a thick parka over a parka that fell almost to his knees, with slits up the side. There were leggings, also blue, and boots that kept his toes snug enough that Zuko didn’t worry about frostbite, though he still checked every night. 

Azula hated all the blue. Zuko did too, in a way, but he also didn’t mind it,  _ in a way _ . The clothes couldn’t hide his scar, or his black hair, or his gold eyes, or his swords, which were obviously from another land, but if he pulled the hood up, he could almost pretend he fit in.

“What’s wrong with you?” Zuko asked, the words coming out more awkwardly than he had wanted them to.

“None of your business,” she sneered. “I’m perfectly fine.”

“Sure,” Zuko remarked. “Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.”

She exhaled loudly, smoke floating from her nostrils in a woosh. “She’s a natural at  _ that _ .” Her voice was scornful as she tipped her chin towards Ty Lee, who was spinning in a circle, the water waving between her fingers effortlessly as the younger students watched on.

“Yeah,” Zuko said. “Air goes well with water.”

“Air goes well with fire too,” Azula snapped. “And I don’t see her practicing  _ that _ .”Zuko glanced at her for a long moment, then laughed. “What?” she snarled, whipping to face him, a strand of hair falling free from her tight bun.

“You’re jealous,” Zuko realized. “You’re jealous that she’s spending all her time waterbending instead of practicing with you, is that it?”

“She’s hardly the fire prodigy she needs to be,” Azula said, digging her boots into the snow. The ice began to melt around them, leaving deep indented footprints. “And she never puts in the work.”

“I think Ty Lee has proved she’s a capable firebender enough times,” Zuko told her. “She helped you stop a volcano, Lala.”

Azula turned her head away. Zuko didn’t have to see her face to know she was pouting. He sighed, rubbing his forehead, then got up and left her to sulk in silence.

Later that day, she decided the young Water Tribe kids were free target practice and nearly got them all expelled. The end result was her being confined to their shared quarters, which led to her melting most of them. Zuko could only be glad that they hadn’t revealed their true identities to Chief Arnook, or he was sure they would be being held for ransom now.

Needless to say, Zuko couldn’t hang out with Azula much after that. And with Ty Lee busy, that left him to spend most of his days hanging out with Moshi, who was a surprisingly good companion, despite her inability to talk.

However, company found him in an unexpected way—or should he say, in the way of an unexpected person: Yue. 

When she first approached him, several days after Ty Lee had begun training, Zuko hadn’t been sure what to expect. Certainly not for her to ask him if he’d like a tour of the Northern Water Tribe via the canal.

Zuko hadn’t wanted to be rude, and he hadn’t known if it was some strange test, so he had said yes.

Yue, it turned out, was actually lovely company. She had a charming sense of humor beneath her calm demeanor, and a loyalty that ran deep in her veins. She came across as soft, but Zuko recognized the hardness in her eyes, as if they had been carved from chips of ice. It made him want to connect to her, to open up about his identity as the (former) Crown Prince of the Fire Nation. He thought, maybe, that she would understand him in a way Azula couldn’t—she cared about her people, and Zuko cared about his, even if he knew he would never be a leader strong enough for them.

_ You’re weak _ , his father told him in his dreams.  _ You would lead them to their deaths.  _

In his dreams, Zuko knew that it was father who had done just that, but when he tried to open his mouth, no words came out. Instead, his father took the words from, the ones that said  _ suffering will be your master  _ and shoved them down Zuko’s throat until he was choking on them, until they were the only thing he believed. 

Yue keeps coming round. Zuko didn’t expect that, but he didn’t dislike it. She was new company, and she looked to be in need of a friend, or at least someone to escape from her fiance with. From what Zuko could see, Hahn clung to her like she was his last lifeline, and from what Zuko also saw, Yue hid her betrothal necklace whenever Hahn wasn’t around.

Zuko didn’t blame her. He wouldn’t want to be engaged at sixteen either.

He asked her why her hair was white, once, and she had grown quiet, then skillfully changed the subject without so much as a grimace. Zuko had let it slide, then, because she hadn’t asked about his scar, even though he knew she stared at it sometimes, when he turned his head and couldn’t see her out of his left eye.

Yue was unlike Azula and Ty Lee personality wise, but Zuko couldn’t exclude the fact that he liked hanging out with her simply because he felt that he didn’t have to look out for her. They were the same age, and she was mature past her time as well; she was a friend, not a sister, and Zuko hadn’t had one of those in a long time.

So, inexplicably, for the past two weeks, Zuko had been hanging out with the Princess of the Northern Water Tribe, much to the obvious chagrin of her father, who could always be found watching them with a frown when they passed him, or when Zuko returned Yue to the palace. It had been enough to make Zuko wilt the first time, enough to send him panicking back to his quarters the next day afraid of what he might do, but Yue had turned up unharmed the next day, pleasant as always, and as Chief Arnook hadn’t said anything to Zuko, or sent men to kidnap or beat him up yet, Zuko assumed he was fine. It wasn’t like he was courting Yue, anyways, or that he even could court her. She was betrothed after all, even if it was to a dull headed idiot.

That was how he ended up on Moshi with her, on a morning where the sky shone so crystal blue it looked as if it was made of ice. The city stretched glittering white beneath them, the cold wind buffeting their faces.

“I’ve never seen it from above,” Yue said. Her cheeks were slightly pink, matching the light cosmetics that traced her eyelids and lips. “It looks beautiful.”

“It’s an impressive sight,” Zuko agreed. “The Caldera looks like it’s the sun from above—as if it’s on fire.”

“You’ve been to the Caldera?” Yue asked, glancing at him out of the corner of her eyes, before turning to gaze downwards again. Zuko could see the beginning of the ocean in front of them, the dark blue lapping at the snow white edges.

“I’ve seen it before,” he said cautiously.

“I thought you were from the colonies,” Yue said, tilting her head. Her hair loops fell with her, highlighting the brown of her skin. 

Zuko chuckled, hoping it didn’t sound as forced and dry as it felt. “As you can see, we travel a lot.”

Yue laughed, her eyes crinkling. When the sun hit them, the looked almost silver gold, even though Zuko knew it was a trick of the light, that her eyes were actually a deep brown.

“I can see that.” There was a slight accent to her words that made them sound sharp and a little thick in her mouth, slipping between syllables. 

It began to snow. Zuko stuck out his tongue, catching one of them. It melted away; he felt loose and relaxed for the first time in months, as if flying away on Moshi had made him able to physically and mentally leave his problems behind. He could almost pretend it wasn’t summer; it wasn’t here, after all.

There was a strange aftertaste in his mouth. Zuko frowned and looked at the snow: it was gray.

“The snow…” he started, turning to Yue, only to find she was already looking forward, a look of horror spreading across her face, marring the beauty. He followed her gaze to see the line of Fire Nation ships on the horizon, creeping forward with their red and black lining.

“It’s not snow,” Yue whispered. “It’s ash.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading and I hope it wasn't too much of a disappointment! Yue and Zuko would have been friends, and the fact that they never met was a wasted opportunity. Honestly, I love Yue from the show, but they don't do much with her character, so she'll probably be a bit ooc throughout the series - I have a lot of plans for her character, which I'm really looking forward to using. (Also, yes, brown eyed Yue <3 I read a fic where she had brown eyes and I really loved it, so I thought why not.)
> 
> Again, I'm on [tumblr](https://astarlightmonbebe.tumblr.com/); don't be shy, leave a comment or a kudo; nobody ever died from too much love, so yeah <3
> 
> See you all soon (hopefully)!


	7. 七

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, at the book one finale. I wrote 3k on this today in a burst of inspiration (it was raining, which is where I attribute my success), and was going to hold off until Friday, but I figured I made you all wait so long for the last update, so here we are, in record time. This chapter was hard at first to put into words, but I still like it a lot, and I hope it lives up to expectations. It features the siege of the Northern Water Tribe and lots of spiritual stuff (which this fic has a lot of, since I love how much of LoK revolves around the Spirit World, and I wanted to inject some of that into here as well). 
> 
> Warnings for a graphic (? I guess) depiction of injury and some violence.

The Northern Water Tribe was under siege. Ty Lee could see the ships on the horizon, towering over the walls, which seemed small compared to the size of the warships. There was no way out; they were trapped in a city of ice with enemies at all sides.

A wave of fireballs split the surface of the wall and the waterbenders rose in waves, water splashing up to meet them. The sky above them exploded in a shower of fiery sparks, and Ty Lee could only watch as they rained down, staining the pristine surface black with ash. Her feet were sinking into the walkway, leaving footprints deep in it.

“Ty Lee!” Moshi landed with a spray of snow and water, Zuko hardly waiting for her to settle before he had thrown himself off the sky bison and raced towards her, slipping and sliding across the walkway.

She turned to him, vaguely registering Yue behind him, the ash staining her hair gray, smudged across her cheeks. Ty Lee had never seen her look less than perfect or composed, but there was a terror in her eyes now, fear evident.

“Hurry, we need to find safety,” Zuko said, grabbing her wrist. He started to pull her, then ground to a halt when he realized she wasn’t moving. “Ty  _ Lee _ .”

“I need to help,” she managed to stutter out, even though her heart was pumping too fast for her lungs to keep up and her breath sounded like it was being choked out of her. (She was an airbender, for spirit’s sake. Airbenders didn’t panic, because they were in control of their breathing. It should be simple!) (It wasn’t simple. Not at all.)

“There’s  _ thousands  _ of soldiers there, and dozens of ships. You’re not strong enough yet,” Zuko said.

The words felt like a slam in the chest.  _ You’re not strong enough _ . And that was the thing, wasn’t it? She wasn’t strong enough. She wasn’t even sixteen yet—the age every other Avatar had been chosen to be the world’s spiritual connection. They’d had years to train, and she had barely been training for a month, and she— 

She wasn’t strong enough. She hadn’t been strong enough to save her people. She hadn’t been strong enough to even save her family. 

And now the Fire Nation had arrived at the shores of a people once again, and Ty Lee was confronted with the fact that she was  _ helpless  _ in the face of it.

Avatar Kyoshi had told her she would have to be strong. Avatar Roku had told her she would know what to do. Kill the Fire Lord, even if she didn’t want to. Take down the Fire Nation. No space for wavering. No time for being fifteen and out of an era. 

Ty Lee knew it wasn’t enough to be trying. She had to be strong enough  _ now _ , but she could hardly balance two elements, let alone three. It was easy to feel connected to waterbending—it was calm and fluid, as free as airbending—but practicing with so much water made her inner flame feel like it was faltering. She’d tried practicing with all three a couple times, but it was like taking a test in school and scrambling to fill in all the sections at once; you could, in the end, only do one at a time. 

“I need to help,” she heard herself repeat dazedly. Mayhem surrounded them on all sides, with soldiers rushing forward and back again with war paint smudged across their faces, boomerangs and swords strapped to their backs. It was a surge of blue and black and white, and she was standing in the middle of it. “I just...I just need to connect, or something, I don’t—”

She didn’t know what. What to say, what to do. Only an inkling of an idea. They had faced so many threats in their short journey already, but those had been elemental. Monsters, volcanoes, escapades. Not thousands of soldiers at a shore, ready to destroy anyone that stood in their way. All of that, and even the ones who were fleeing. The women, children, soldiers. Benders and non benders. 

Her mouth tasted metallic. Ty Lee realized, slowly, that she had started to tremble. She fisted her hands, trying to breath in and out steadily, but it was all too  _ much _ . 

“Your Highness!” someone yelled through it all, and Yue turned in an explosion of purple skirts flying up, snow cascading with the movement. 

“The Chief has asked us to take you to safety,” the one in the lead said, dropping into a deep bow. “Please follow us.”

“I—” Yue opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked hesitant, and afraid, but as Ty Lee watched, she set her lips in a firm line. Then, she turned to Zuko and Ty Lee, saying, “Come with me.”

“Your Highness!” the guard cried, but Yue had already started to run, hands flying to her robes and hefting them into the air as she sprinted across the snow. Zuko exchanged a look with Ty Lee, then quickly took off after the Water Tribe Princess, whose white hair flowed like a beacon behind her.

For someone who was laden down with heavy furs and multiple layers of fur, Yue moved quickly, her footsteps as light as an airbender’s. Ty Lee had to use the wind, once or twice, to keep them ahead; she didn’t know where they were going, but she knew intuitively it was somewhere the Princess didn’t wish for her guards to follow her to.

A fireball slammed into the ground at their feet, erupting out in a spray of snow and yellow. Zuko slipped and fell, an arm up to shield his face as he slid low to the ground. Ty Lee thrust her hands out, but in her panic, she had no place to redirect the overwhelming force, and only caused it to flare up more. 

The ground they were standing on splintered, water shooting up and pushing the ice apart. Zuko flipped himself over, a hand fumbling for his swords, and drew them out, digging them haphazardly into iceberg in order to keep himself from sliding into the frigid waters that splashed up. 

Yue spun. The bottom of her robe had caught on fire; it flamed, hot and orange as it ate up, and her face shone golden and fearful. She flicked her wrist and water rose in a wave, cascading over them and washing the fire out easily. 

Zuko exhaled, pulling himself up. Ty Lee grabbed his hand, helping him get to his feet, then closed her eyes and felt for her staff on the wind, pulling it toward her. 

Yue’s hands had fallen slack at her sides. Her hair and clothes were in disarray, but her attention was gone from them, vacantly focused on something else.

Ty Lee turned, slowly. The sun was setting now, finally, but the wall was already crumbling, ice slipping down and crashing into the water with earth shattering booms. 

“They’re targeting the ice cliffs,” Zuko said. “Agna Qel’a won’t hold up for much longer if the wall falls.”

“But it won’t,” Yue said, but it ended more like a question. “The Northern Water Tribe is as impenetrable as Ba Sing Se.”

Zuko’s face was grim. “You’ve never been attacked by the Fire Nation before, have you?”

Yue shook her head, swallowing hard. “We must hurry,” she finally said, her face pale and washed in the rising moonlight. “The moon gives us strength, but I don’t know if it will be enough.”

“Where are we going?” Ty Lee asked, spinning her staff through the air and pushed away a few incoming sparks. She had no idea where they were in the city; the guards had long since disappeared, and now it was only people in blue racing this and that way, some into the safety of their homes, the rest to reinforce the waterbending warriors.

“Somewhere where you can help,” Yue said, and her eyes seemed to have seen straight to Ty Lee’s soul, pinning her there like a butterfly to a wall.

“Okay,” she responded, softly, because she couldn’t argue with that.

“I need to find my sister,” Zuko said. “Ty Lee, have you seen her?”

Ty Lee was ashamed to admit that she hadn’t seen Azula in quite a while, or even thought of her. They hadn’t been speaking lately, with the Fire Nation’s Princess’ attitude being cold and cruel—or at least, colder and crueler than usual. Too cold for such a frosty climate. Guilt gnawed at her stomach, hungry and heavy.

“Looking for me, Zuzu?”

Relief spread across Zuko’s face, a shine returning to it as all three of them spun to see Azula perched on top of a snowbank, balanced neatly, a hang alight with blue fire. 

“Where’ve you been?” Zuko demanded as she leaped down, making a show of dusting the snow off your clothes.

“Around,” she replied indifferently. “Waiting to make an entrance.” 

Zuko’s face drew together tightly, and Ty Lee was sure he was going to yell at her, but he didn’t, only saying, “Come with us, then. We need to stick together.”

“We need to  _ leave _ . Now.” Azula crossed her arms, Zuko assuming a similarly defensive position. Ty Lee had noticed that he tended to do that; he mimicked his sister’s defenses and responses, as if trying to level the playing ground. 

“Azula,” Zuko said. “We’re staying.”

“You know I’m the last person to want to run away,” Azula said calmly, stepping forward. “But we have no obligation here. These aren’t our people, and if we die here, or get captured, I can’t help you. We can’t help  _ our  _ people.”

Zuko stared at her. He was saying nothing. Ty Lee felt discomfort rise in her chest, forming a lump in her throat.

“ _ Your  _ people?” Yue echoed. Her brow was furrowed as she watched the two siblings. 

They ignored her, Azula stepping closer. “You’ve spent your whole life playing the role of a coward,  _ Zuzu _ . You spent the last three years  _ running away _ , and now you want to stand your ground? Because you think you have power on your side? You don’t. Nobody here cares about us, so we shouldn’t care about them. We need to save ourselves so we can do the self righteous, self sacrificing, save the world act later on.”

There wasn’t a question. She wasn’t asking. Ty Lee herself was beginning to feel a bit swayed; there was something about Azula’s words that sounded charming and alluring. Maybe it would be better if they left now, but then what? They kept running, kept trying to stay ahead. 

And the world caught up, time and time again.

(She had run away, then, one hundred years ago.) 

“Leave if you’re going to,” Yue cried, her voice rising. The two Fire Nation siblings startled, turning to look at the disheveled Princess, who stood amidst the white snow. “If you’re going to run and abandon us, then  _ run _ . But either you come with me now, or you stop wasting my time.”

Azula blinked slowly, her eyes like liquid copper, as if she could hardly be bothered. Yue’s own brown eyes met the other girl’s with defiance flaring in her own.

“I’m going to do what it takes to save my people,” she said, her spine straightening as she spoke. “I can do it with or without your help, but I  _ will stop  _ the Fire Nation from claiming any more lives today.” She spoke without even a tremble in her voice. 

“I’m coming with you,” Ty Lee said, gripping her staff tightly. She turned to face Zuko and Azula. “And you can’t stop me.”

“I wouldn’t,” Zuko said. “But I’ll go where my sister does.” He turned to Azula, raising an eyebrow. She chewed on her lip, expression different.

“You won’t survive on your own,” she finally said, and Ty Lee knew that was the closest thing to an admission of agreement they were going to get.

“This way,” Yue said. “We’re close.” 

She took off through the snow again, and she must have been using waterbending, because she appeared to glide over the slippery ice and snow, her feet barely sinking in.

The three of them followed her through the winding gridwork, closer and closer to the center of the city. Finally, Yue stopped in front of a large fountain, one where Ty Lee had practiced her waterbending time and time again. She was used to seeing the space filled with small children learning to bend, but now it was abandoned, even the footprints swept away. The water sprayed upward in an arc, almost white against the falling night. Ty Lee could hear the faint sound of fire crackling in the distance, but it seemed to far away.

Yue turned to look back at then, a sliver of silver cutting the profile of her face. “Hold your breath,” she said. “And follow me.” 

Then, without waiting for them, without even taking off her outer robe, the Princess dove into the water, disappearing from sight.

“No way,” Azula said, her nose crinkling in disgust. 

Zuko shrugged. “Doesn’t seem that hard.” He tightened his swords, slipped off his boots, inhaled deeply, and then splashed into the water, disappearing soundlessly into the black beneath the surface.

Azula’s fists lit up blue. “I don’t think that will work beneath the water,” Ty Lee tried to tell her, but the firebender only gave her the disdainful look she had been subjecting the Avatar to for the past two weeks. She ran forward, nimbly leaping over the edge, and sent up a spray of water that soaked Ty Lee to the bone.

She was alone, now. Looking back over her shoulder, she watched the orange in the sky fade and then explode again. It seemed to be dissipating, slowly but surely, as water rose in towering waves to submerge it. As the sun gave firebenders strength, the moon did the same to waterbenders, and they were getting stronger.

Ty Lee drew in a gasp of breath and, before she could lose her nerve, dove beneath the water.

It was cold. Cold and dark. For a single, disorienting moment, which felt like a minute, but was probably more like a second, Ty Lee felt lost in the emptiness, as if the water was dragging her down.

Then, she saw the faint, sputtering blue of Azula beneath her, and remembered what she was here to do. She spun her arms around in a circle, forming a ball of blue water, and propelled herself downwards, concentrating hard to keep the air around her intact. She couldn’t see Zuko or Yue, only Azula twisting like a dragon through the waves, leaving a dying trail of fire in her wake.

It was getting hard to breathe. Ty Lee exhaled into the limited air and gave herself a final burst of energy, seeing Azula’s form disappear up above. She dove, sleek as a seal, and found a tunnel carved into the rocky sides of the underneath.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever. Ty Lee felt her mind start to go a little woozy as she propelled herself forward, only her ability to follow the current preventing her from slamming headfirst into the sides of the tunnel. Finally, she saw light, and gave one final push, breaking the surface of the water with a gasp as she floundered for purchase.

Arms pulled her out, and Ty Lee felt something soft beneath her. It took her a moment to identify it as grass, after spending so long on the ice and amidst the snow. Nothing green grew there, except— 

She was in the middle of the greenest place she had seen in weeks. The water she had come out of was crystal clear, surrounding a small island covered in colors so vibrant they nearly hurt her eyes. In the center, a tree sprouted tall, laden with pink flowers, over water so clear it reflected the scene above it perfectly. The only disturbance were two fish threading their way through it. One was black with a white spot, while the other was its inverse, white with a black spot.

Yue was kneeling over the pond, fingers dipped into the water, her charred robes spread out around her. 

“What is this place?” Ty Lee asked, rising to her feet slowly. She felt a tug in her heart; the spiritual energy in the air was thick and pulling, clinging to her skin as if it recognized her.

“This is the most well protected secret of my people,” Yue said. “The Spirit Oasis.”

Zuko was looking around with a mix of awe and fear; Azula looked as if she was trying to pinpoint the best way to burn it all down, skepticism written across her face.

Ty Lee crossed the ground to the pool, sinking into a cross legged position. “How?” she asked, for lack of other words to say.

“The physical manifestations of Tui and La live here,” Yue said, pointing at the fish. “It is the center of all spiritual energy and strength for my people, created by Tui and La themselves thousands of years ago.” She smiled, faintly. “When I was born, I was stillborn. My parents were so afraid; they took me here, placed me in the water, and prayed to Tui to save me. And she did. She gave me life again; it’s why my hair is white.”

She tore her gaze away from the pool and fixated her eyes seriously on Ty Lee. “You said you needed to connect. If you can...enter the Spirit World and save my people, here is the best place to do it.”

Ty Lee watched the fish swim back and forth, mesmerizingly. “I can try,” she finally said, laying her staff down on the ground in front of her and sinking back into a meditation position. It was warm, but in a soothing way, as if a cool summer breeze was brushing against her skin.

“We’ll guard her,” she heard Zuko say, heard the grass beneath his feet as he treaded lightly to her back, Azula coming around to her front, splashing through the pool carelessly. She murmured something about her shoes with a sigh. 

Ty Lee relaxed her body, sitting as still as possible, and stretched out her consciousness, feeling the water rippling and the air moving through the oasis. The current of life, vibrant, like strings were surrounding her. She reached out, slowly, to the water, feeling coolness slip over her mind.

She opened her eyes, finding herself underwater, surrounded by waves. The current pushed at her, soothingly, reminding her of how life had been at the Air Temples, surrounded by an element that was made of breathing itself. She found herself able to breathe easily, feeling the water, but not filling her lungs.

A shadow swam beneath her, a serpentine creature curling around her feet and then plunging into the depths below. As she adjusted, Ty Lee noticed more and more of the strange spirits, swimming through the sea, casting soft golden glows.

The water beneath her rippled, and a fish swam up, dark ink trailing it. Ty Lee watched, transfixed, as the fish spun around her, faster and faster, until it had lost shape entirely, forming into a woman who drifted in the water in front of her. She was young, wearing a blue gown that couldn’t seem to decide on a color, camouflaging into the water around her as it drifted out. Her hair was black and silky, flowing with the current around her, and when she opened her eyes, they were glowing a bright white.

This, Ty Lee knew, was La. She wasn’t sure what to do, but she bowed as best as she could in the water, clasping her fists together in a show of respect.

The Ocean Spirit smiled at her. “It has been a long time,” she said. “Since I have been visited by the Avatar.” Her voice sounded...odd. As if she was speaking through the water; as if her voice  _ was  _ the water—a bubbling of a creek, the rushing of a river, the crashing of waves as they broke against the shoreline.

“The Northern Water Tribe is in danger,” Ty Lee explained. 

La dipped her head, lowering her eyes, the glow in them dimming. Her expression was sorrowful. “I know,” she said. “Enemies are in my water.”

“Can’t you stop them?” Ty Lee asked, unsure of what else to say. She had never entered the Spirit World before emerging in this current century, even though the monks had taught her all there was to know on airbender spirituality.

La looked sad, albeit a bit amused, but not angry. “It has been a long time,” she repeated. “Since I have left the Spirit World. Tui and I swore our peace centuries ago. We came to the North Pole to keep the balance between our two forces, so the waterbenders could thrive. I cannot leave the Spirit Oasis on my own. It would disrupt the balance.”

“If I could offer my services,” Ty Lee began. La shifted in front of her, the waves sweeping around her dress with more force. Ty Lee paused, swallowing. “Your people need you,” she finally said. “You might not be able to leave the Spirit Oasis, but  _ I  _ can. Let me be your host.”

La considered her. “You are the first Avatar I have seen in a long time,” she said, again. “You are unlike the ones before you.”

“I’m young,” Ty Lee offered by way of explanation. 

“Ah, but you are not,” La said. She sounded almost pleased, but Ty Lee wasn’t sure that spirits as old as the ocean could feel such human emotion. 

“It depends on who you ask,” Ty Lee replied. “Or what you mean by the definition of age.”

“Clever,” La hummed. “You’re not one of my avatars.”

“The Airbenders serve no spirit, but the world,” Ty Lee said.

“Are you strong enough?” La asked her, the white from her eyes leaking out, tears running down her face. “The ocean is depthless. You are a small vessel. I do not know if you can contain it’s multitudes. It could break you.” Though she had no pupils or irises, her eyes were hard all the same.

Ty Lee unclenched her hands, letting the water run through her fingers. “I am small,” she acknowledged. “And I’m not as strong as I could be. I haven’t reached my full potential yet. The ocean may very well break me.” She looked straight into La’s white eyes. “But it’s a risk I am prepared to take.”

La studied her—or, that was what Ty Lee assumed she was doing. Her aura fluctuated around her, a deep, rich blue, that pulled at Ty Lee. Finally, the Ocean Spirit spoke, saying, “As you wish, Avatar.” 

Ty Lee exhaled, closing her eyes and feeling the core of her body tug. It felt like her blood was moving in her veins, as if it was mimicking the flow of the ocean. She felt her arrows start to glow, cool against her skin, as if water was wrapping up her wrists and around her head, like La was embracing her in a hug. It was as if her consciousness was expanding, growing, to hold more knowledge, to hold another being. It was unlike entering the Avatar State or visiting the other Avatars—this was something more; La  _ was  _ more.

A cry cut through her concentration, filled with pain and surprise. Beside her, in her, La tugged at her consciousness, trying to pull her under all the way, but Ty Lee froze, only having enough of her own mind left to register it as  _ Azula _ , before her concentration had broken apart, splintering like glass, and she surged forward and out of the ocean, hands digging into the dirt in front of her for purchase.

She looked up, slowly, the world moving around her in all the wrong times, and saw Azula standing across the pool from her, fire flickering in her hand. She looked like she had been in the process of turning, but had been stopped. By a sword, which had pierced her chest and split up through her ribs, the hilt buried into her back, metal dripping red. Blood had fallen into the pool, billowing out almost peacefully.

Yue had fallen back in front of her, blood spattered across her face, her hair, and her clothes. 

Azula gasped, a wet, choking sound. She reached a hand up, shaking, to touch the blade, the fire in her palm dying. She tried to say something, flames flickering past her lips, and Ty Lee realized that it wasn’t just her fire dying; it was  _ Azula dying _ .

The sword was pulled back and the firebender fell forward, collapsing in a heap on the ground. Yue immediately rushed forward, pulling the water from the pond with her, only for the Fire Nation soldier to backhand her so hard the crack echoed across the once still waters. The water splashed to the ground and Yue sprawled out, catching herself with her elbows.

“You must be fucking insane,” Zuko spat, running forward and leaping across the pond easily. His swords were two silver streaks through the air behind him. 

The Fire Nation soldier grinned—it was Zhao, Ty Lee realized, and immediately her heart sunk. 

“Prince Zuko,” he said. “I’m sure your father will be thrilled to hear how you’ve killed your sister. You must have really gone insane, if what the rumors say is true. Too many years at sea.”

“What?” Zuko spat, outrage slowly fading to horror.

“Prince?” Yue repeated with blood stained lips, her eyes rising. Her voice was quiet, but they had all heard it.

“Heal my sister,” Zuko told her, voice tight. “I’ll take care of  _ him _ .” His eyes were hard when they looked at Zhao, and Ty Lee knew blood was going to be shed in the Spirit Oasis tonight.

No, blood had already been shed. Azula was there, bleeding out in rivulets and pools, her skin deathly pale. 

Ty Lee started to rise, but Yue whispered, “No.” Her voice was quiet; she raised her eyes. “Go  _ back _ ,” she said. “This is a fight we can win.” 

She didn’t sound sure. There was no time to doubt.

Yue drew the water from the pond as Zuko unsheathed his swords. Azula gasped for breath on the ground, trying desperately to hold her insides in her body, but Ty Lee could practically feel the life seeping out with every second.

Ty Lee closed her eyes and made her choice.

She didn’t know if it was the right one.

* * *

Zuko had never lost his sister before. It didn’t  _ work  _ like that. Azula was the one who was better at everything. She was the one that beat him at everything. Zuko had never worried about her, because she had always been  _ safe _ ; Zuko was second place, so he took the worst of his father’s force. Azula excelled at everything, including beating people. No one stood a chance when it came to her. 

But Zhao had stabbed her in the back.

It was so fucking  _ cowardly.  _ If Zuko had been a bender, he thought that he would be alive with fire right now, burning through his veins. (He wondered, briefly, if that was how Azula felt whenever she got angry.) But he wasn’t a bender, and all he had were two swords, which had to be enough. 

Zhao and he considered one another for a long moment. They had never fought before, conversations tilting on the edge of falsely polite to outright hostile, but never venturing into such treacherous waters. Zuko had always been a second away from throwing it all away and punching the older man in the face, keeping composure with gritted teeth. He had always known that Zhao had known that, and that the now Admiral, then General, had pushed his buttons with sadistic pleasure. Then Azula had been there to defend him whenever he needed her to, and she had always been much more effective at shutting Zhao down.

“You’re dead today,” Zuko told him, quiet and deadly as the blades he wielded.

Zhao had the nerve to smirk. “I don’t think I’ll be the one dying here,” he replied, and Zuko had heard enough. He lashed out before Zhao had a chance to speak again.

The Admiral might have had fire on his side, but it was weak without Agni shining down on him, and Zuko was a whirlwind when it came to his swords. He knew Zhao didn’t know how  _ good  _ Zuko was, because he knew the man was one of the Fire Nation supremacists who believed non benders to be inferior in any way, but especially when it came to fighting.

Zuko would show him. He didn’t have a choice. He was going to cut the man opposing him to pieces for what he had done to Azula, and when he was done, he would let his sister have the rest of him.

Because his sister  _ would  _ survive this. Zuko couldn’t even let the doubt that maybe he had already lost her creep into his mind. He  _ refused  _ to let it even begin to form. 

When his mother had left, when he knew deep in his bones that his father had likely had her killed, he had ignored it all. He had told himself she had simply run away, found her first love, lived happily ever after. It was easier to think that she had abandoned them out of love rather than died for it, even if both hurt so badly he wanted to do nothing but float listlessly next to the turtleducks for days.

Azula wouldn’t die. That was the one thing that absolutely could not happen, under any circumstances.

He didn’t let himself look at her. He could only trust that Yue was doing the best that she could; there was a blue glow from the corner of his eye, his shoes splashing through a mix of blood and water. He had to keep Zhao here. He couldn’t get across the pond to Ty Lee, and he couldn’t get past Zuko to Yue or Azula.

Zuko was the first line of defense, and the last. He wasn’t a very good one, and he certainly wasn’t someone he would trust to have his own back, but he knew, desperately, that he would do anything to stop Zhao there in that moment.

A metal enclosed kick to the ribs sent him skidding across the grass, and Zuko crossed his swords over his face, feeling the heat of the fire go straight across his nose, singing his hair. He flipped himself forward, drawing first blood across Zhao’s sleeve. He could only focus on the constant switch between offense and defense, sweat dripping down his forehead. He didn’t know what Zhao being here meant for the outside, but he hoped that the Northern Water Tribe was holding their own.

If they fell, his father would begin his plan to conquer the world. It would be the Earth Kingdom next—or, what hadn’t already been steamrolled. 

Zhao came for his leg. Zuko leaped out of the way, but the tail end of the fire caught on his leg, making him drop to the ground and roll to put it out, slashing up as he did and scrambling back to his footing. The ground was so slippery he nearly lost his balance again, narrowly avoiding a fatal mistake. 

Zhao grabbed his shoulder and Zuko bucked, kicking the man in the jaw and ignoring the familiar burn that spread up his body, numbing his nerves. He flicked his wrist, swords clanging against armor, and tried to find the soft spot, inches from the edge of his blades. If he could only maneuver a bit— 

Fire roared towards his face and Zuko spun away on instinct, unable to hold back the flinch, and he knew,  _ knew  _ that Zhao knew that was Zuko’s weakness, that he had known since the Agni Kai, that he did it whenever Zuko was getting the upper hand because he  _ knew  _ it would throw him off his guard.

Zuko knew all this, but in every moment, Zhao’s face looked so much like his father’s.

He was kneeling on the ground and he couldn’t breathe. He was crying—the last time he had ever dared to cry, really—and begging, and he could smell his own fear, pungent in the air.

_ If this doesn’t make you a firebender _ , his father had whispered in his ear, roughly grabbing his hair.  _ Then I don’t know what will. _

Kicking out blindly, Zuko flung himself away, realizing a moment too late that he was slipping before he crashed into the spiritual pond. Zhao followed him, reaching forward, and Zuko reached out a second too late.

The Admiral grabbed the white fish— _ Tui _ , Zuko’s mind supplied intuitively—and Zuko could only watch in aborted horror as his hands lit on fire and the fish disintegrated.

In the sky overhead, the moon disappeared.

Everything went red, and then it was dark, as if light had been pulled from every crevice and swallowed by a gaping black hole.

Yue cried out, water splashing to the ground around Azula. The Princess fell forward, a hand wrapped around her stomach, eyes clenched shut in obvious pain. 

The world was still, and silent, for a moment, maybe more. The ashes blew from Zhao’s hand, disappearing. Yue’s mouth was open, but no sound came out. Everything was set in shades of gray and white and black, except for her eyes, which shone dark brown. The magic from the water was gone; Azula was slipping away, a stark black outline.

Then: noise. It sounded like a crash; Zuko looked up in flickering stop motion and saw fire exploding across the darkened sky, no waves to stop it this time. The noise, Zuko realized, was the sound of ice cracking apart and slamming down into the water.

“No,” Yue whispered. She pulled herself to her feet, stumbling forward. Tears were spilling from her eyes. They shone in silver rivulets, running silently, leaving faint, glimmering tracks behind them as they fell. She stared at the dead, dark water of the spirit pond, her chest heaving.

“You’ll die today,  _ Princess _ ,” Zhao said, smiling down at her. Zuko tried to stand, but a foot pushed him back, reminding him of the heat of flame with a small, dancing demonstration across the metal.

“I will,” Yue said, her voice soft but steady. Zuko couldn’t hear a waver in it, only strength. “But not by your hands.” 

She swallowed, chin pointed upwards, and reached forward one hand. It was trembling, her fingers shaking as she slowly but surely dipped them into the water of the spirit pond. Zuko watched, mesmerized, as blue spread out from her fingers, spreading across the pond in a wave, until it glittered with tangible spiritual magic once again.

The Princess of the Northern Water Tribe’s eyes rolled up in her head, and Yue collapsed on the ground, Zhao’s laugh abruptly cut off as he blinked, looking puzzled.

It took Zuko a moment too long to understand. It wasn’t until her form began to shiver, fading in and out as a ghost of her began to rise from it, solidifying as her body faded, that he remembered what she had said earlier.

_ I was born stillborn. My parents prayed to Tui to save me. And she did. She gave me life. _

Yue was exactly the sort of person who would give it back to save her people.

The last outline of Yue’s mortal body faded, and for a moment her spirit hung in the air, emanating a soft glow, floating over the water. She looked as if she was resting, eyes closed and head tilted down.

Zhao took a step back. A branch cracked beneath his feet.

Yue’s eyes flew open, and there was  _ light _ .

It spilled forward, in every crack and crevice as the moon flared back to life like a dying star reversed. Zuko saw white, blinding him, and he instinctively threw up an arm to shield his eyes from it. The Spirit Oasis surged around him, the current running through it almost made up of distinctive strands. The amount of returning power was so astounding that Zuko could feel it in his own nonbending bones: Raw, uninhibited, brutal force.

On the opposite end of the spirit pond, Ty Lee’s body jerked, her tattoos lighting up like flares of electric blue in the night. Her eyes flared with the magic of the Avatar State, though there was a dark blue tinge to them as she rose, slamming through the barrier over the Spirit Oasis. Zuko watched water rise in a wave with her, solidifying around her. She was a speck of brightness in the middle of a monster that glowed blue, jets of water that were either tentacles or tendrils of hair stretching out in every direction. Zuko might not have been able to see what she was doing, but the sight of the doused fire hanging in the sky above gave him clue enough.

He shoved Zhao off, coming back to himself, shaking the awe from his bones. He felt like he was going blind, eyes burning in his skull, body shaking from the force of two worlds colliding and becoming one, concentrated and overwhelming. It felt as if every part of him was being torn apart, bleeding from the pores, as he passed through Yue’s form, stumbling to where his sister lay.

“Lala,” Zuko whispered, trying to brush some of the hair away from her face. He tried to turn her, tried to find the source of the bleeding, but it was everywhere, red and sticky and coating the pads of his fingers, the knuckles of his hands, the lines of his palms. A part of him registered that he was shaking, but Zuko could only methodically tear off strips of cloth and press down on her wounds, which were  _ everywhere _ , and— 

And she looked just like their mother, with her hair spilling loose and her firebender eyes closed. 

Zuko had dreamed about this. He had been tormented from nightmares where he had found his mother’s body, lying on the cold ground. Where his worst fears had come true; where she hadn’t just disappeared and left him behind, but had left the earth as well.

(In the worst ones, the ones that made him wake up screaming like he had when he had first regained consciousness after the Agni Kai, his mother’s body had been charred beyond recognition, handprints covered her skin in every direction Zuko could see.)

“Azula,” Zuko tried again, touching her face. She was cold. Azula was  _ never  _ cold. No firebender ever was. That was Agni’s blessing so why,  _ why _ , was she freezing?

He wished he was a bender; he wished he could feed her fire, send warmth back into her small body. She didn’t look strong. She didn’t look invincible. She looked like she was fifteen and his little sister and  _ Agni he was supposed to protect her, no matter what she said. _

Zuko pressed harder on the wounds. He didn’t even know if they were still bleeding, but there was nothing else he could do. The child inside of him whispered that one couldn’t bring the dead back to life, but people only died when you  _ let them _ , and Zuko was never letting his sister go. She had said she would never die. She had  _ told  _ him, promised him they would be invincible as long as they were at each other’s sides. She was a fire, and fire never went out, it just burned.

She had told him she wouldn’t die.

But Azula always lied.

* * *

The ocean was inside of her. Ty Lee registered this was giddiness, but that, too, felt far away as La surged through her blood, the water rising around her monstrously. It was a power unlike any other she had ever tapped into before. It was the Avatar State, but it had been multiplied to a thousand. 

Once, when they had visited the old Southern Water Tribe, a trip that had been highly anticipated for Ty Lee—though, looking back on it, she wondered if it had been about finding her a waterbending teacher—the Monks had taught the Air Nomad disciples about the dangers of a riptide. They were harsh currents, one had explained, that would catch you and drag you out to sea before you had even a second to scream. 

This felt like she had been caught by a riptide and rode a wave, as if she was balancing on the crest, one foot in stability and the other teetering over a perilous descent. She was having a hard time disconnecting herself from La and the Avatar; they were three people, desperately shoved into one being for the moment. There was a wave towering over Ty Lee, and she was very small.

The Fire Nation ships looked like toys this high up. Like a chess piece one might place on a strategy board—she’d have to tell that to Zuko later, he might appreciate it. Or maybe Azula. 

If Azula made it out alive.

_ Do not think of her _ , La hissed in her mind, and Ty Lee focused again, feeling her control slip back into that of the Avatar. She moved her arm, and a tentacle of water larger than life followed, sweeping across a row of ships and sending them crashing into water, metal crumpling. They poured more fire at her, but fire was nothing compared to the wrath of the moon and the ocean combined, and even Agni knew this and respected them. 

The ocean rose and devoured all of them whole.

For a moment, Ty Lee simply floated in the glowing blue water, feeling drained. She felt La’s presence start to leave, and then the water was slipping down around her, crashing back into the canals it had come from, and sending Ty Lee straight back into the Spirit World.

She didn’t realize, at first, that was where she was; it looked like the Spirit Oasis, but then she noticed that the sky was full of stars and the start of a sunrise, pale blue compared to the deep blackness that had spread across the Northern Pole.

“Avatar,” a soft, sweet voice said. Ty Lee sat up—she felt as if she had been asleep, lying amongst the soft bed of grass—and turned to see Yue sitting across from her, but it didn’t look like Yue. This Yue had no color to her except a pale lightness that flowed throughout her like lightning, her form rippling gently, as if distracted by a breeze.

“Yue?” she asked, puzzled.

Yue smiled gently, and even that looked wrong. “They named her for me,” she started. “For the moon.  _ Yue _ . A beautiful name.”

“You’re Tui,” Ty Lee realized, struck by sudden understanding. “But you’re...Yue?”

“This form is merely a vessel,” Tui said. It was disconcerting to hear her melodic voice slip past Yue’s lips. “I will need to find a more permanent form, but not this one. Yue is my champion. She will guide you on your journey, Avatar, and to do that, she cannot be the moon.”

Ty Lee blinked. “But Yue said she only knows healing—”

“I’m sure you will not object,” Tui interjected coolly. “The Avatars before have all been trained by men. I would have sent you to the Southern Water Tribe to train, but it is gone now; we could not save it from our Oasis. And you know better than I that the outdated customs of the Northerners will never allow you to fully thrive. You have learned the forms of waterbending, but you have not learned the  _ art _ .”

“But…” Ty Lee started, trailing off. She felt as if she was pretty secure in her waterbending. She had just joined with an ocean spirit, after all, and wrecked havoc to a fleet of the Fire Nation navy. 

“There is always more to know,” Tui said, her eyes— _ Yue’s  _ eyes—hardening. “I bid you luck on your journey.”

Then she was gone.

* * *

Zuko was kneeling by his sister when the Moon Spirit’s form fell in streaking silver and white to the ground, Yue landing with a heap across the grass, her skirts swirling through the bloodied spirit water. In the next moment, Ty Lee appeared beside her, splashing forward with a startled cry as she slipped. 

A blast of water shattered the entrance to the Spirit Oasis and Zuko was on his feet, swords drawn, before he even registered that he had moved, flying across the ground only to get knocked off his feet by a whip of water that slapped the back of his knees. It was gentle, almost, how it took him down, pinning his wrists with ice to the muddied grass on either side of his head.

He struggled. Master Pakku stood above him, his hair disheveled, but the same disapproving frown on his face that Zuko had seen from afar when he had watched Ty Lee’s practices.

“Letting you come here was a mistake,” he hissed darkly. “Fire has always burned us.”

“Your Princess is safe,” Zuko snarled back at him. “My sister isn’t, but I doubt that’s what you’re worried about.”

He needed to go back to her. It had been too long already, and he had performed chest compressions so many times. His clothes were covered in her blood, his hands were numb. 

But Zuko couldn’t leave her behind. He couldn’t give up on Azula, not his sister. She was the only family member who had ever cared about him. Even if the beginning was wrong and she had turned her back on him, she was the only one who had come  _ back _ . His mother and Lu Ten and his uncle had all left, but Azula hadn’t let him leave her, so he owed it to her. He owed it to her to stay by her side.

“The Northern Water Tribe has fallen,” Pakku told him. He sounded resigned, and exhausted, Zuko realized.

“What?” Zuko asked. “But—Zhao—”

“Reinforcements for the Fire Nation will be here in days,” Pakku explained to him. His voice was calm, but he still sounded like he was explaining this to a child. “Agna Qe’la is in shambles. Our wall has been breached, and our reserves are drained. Tui hangs in the balance; she is not strong enough, and she will not be without the proper sacrifice, which she refuses to take. For  _ you _ .” His lip curled. 

“I,” Zuko said. “Have no idea what you’re talking about.”

There was a splash, and Ty Lee hauled herself out of the water, looking at them with blurry eyes. She was pale and drenched, her tattoos faint against her skin. She blinked at them, looking tired and sad.

“You need to go,” Pakku told Zuko sharply, and in the next moment the ice had melted around his wrists, freeing him. Zuko immediately grabbed his swords, leaping to his feet with a frown.

“Master Pakku,” Ty Lee said. She had come closer, wobbling. 

“You need to get out of here,” Pakku told her, voice gentler than Zuko thought it had ever been. “Take Princess Yue with you.”

“Was planning on it,” Ty Lee mumbled, then whistled, sharp and sweet into the uncannily still night air.

“What am I missing?” Zuko asked. His heart was thrumming loudly against his maybe broken ribs. 

“Tui told me that Yue is meant to accompany me on our journey,” Ty Lee told him, looking like she was slowly awakening. 

Zuko had no words for that. A part of him realized he had hardly been processing the events of the night since they had begun, but they couldn’t get worse than what they were at. He looked back at the Princess, who had begun to stir; her hair cast a soft silver by the faded moon that hung above. Pakku frowned at her, lips set in a thin line.

“She has a duty to her people,” he murmured, more to himself than either of them. “And yet Tui seeks to let her take her own path in life.”

“Everyone should have that chance,” Zuko told him, speaking out of the corner of his mouth. The elderly waterbender’s head jerked towards him, a startled look flashing across his eyes as he realized Zuko had heard what he had said.

Moshi appeared overhead, circling twice before coming down to land. Yue was rising to her feet, looking as elegant as always, and Ty Lee darted over to help her, likely planning to fill her in on what was going on. Zuko walked over to where his sister lay. He bent and picked her up in his arms, something he had never been able to do before. 

She was light. Zuko tried not to think of how she should weigh more. He slowly put two fingers to her wrist, but at this point, he wasn’t sure if she was still alive, or if he could only hear his own pulse beating irregularly in his ears.

“You,” Pakku called, and Zuko turned back to look at him. The waterbender held out a vial towards him, water glittering in it. Zuko glanced at it, frowning. “For your sister,” the master clarified. 

Zuko took it. It rested in his hand, weightless and as heavy as a stone all at once.

“Go,” Master Pakku told him, his voice sharp. “Do not come back here again.”

Zuko gave him a cursory glare as he left, not deigning himself to respond to the pointed comment. He was tired of men who tried to make him feel lesser. Ty Lee was waiting by Moshi when he reached her, she took Azula in her arms with a gentle gust of air.

“Is she…?” The Avatar was unable to finish whatever it was she wanted to ask (Zuko knew what she wanted to ask all the same), a pained expression on her face as she gazed at Azula’s bloody body.

“She wouldn’t go like this,” Zuko said. 

(No one chose how they went, but in Zuko’s experience, most of them just left.)

He climbed up onto Moshi, his body aching in every crevice and crack—many, he guessed, hairlined across his bones. Azula had been laid out across the floor; Ty Lee gave her one last fleeting look, her hand ghosting over Azula’s forehead. She hovered, like she wanted to do more, but then she drifted back to Moshi’s head, where she grabbed the reins and they took to the air.

Yue was sitting across from him, still and silent. Zuko unfurled his fingers from around the vial and held it out to her silently. “I don’t know what to do with this,” he said, softly.

She looked at him for a long second, then reached forward and took it, uncapping it. The water spun out lightly across her fingers, glowing silvery white where her fingertips passed beneath it. Zuko wondered at it, but he quickly shoved the thoughts aside as she rested her palm above Azula’s fractured chest. It gleamed blue and silver over the blood stained remains of her clothing.

Nothing happened. Zuko watched and watched and waited.

“The Fire Lord,” Yue said. Her voice was hoarse, but as soft as ever. “Prince Zuko. Princess Azula. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Zuko said. His throat ached from where he had taken a hit he had been unable to defend himself from. 

“Was it a lie?” her voice was even, her form unfaltering, but Zuko tensed anyways.

“No,” he replied.

“I would understand if it was,” Yue continued. Her face was knit with concentration, but otherwise completely blank. Zuko wondered if this was the same Yue he had seen several hours ago, or if she had been changed. Spirits, his mother had told him, could do that to a person.

“You don’t need to understand everything, or anything,” Zuko said. “I’m not my father, and neither is Azula.”

Yue laughed, raising an eyebrow.

“She’s  _ not _ ,” Zuko repeated, and his tone was so fierce that Yue only nodded. He couldn’t blame her, not really—two years ago, Zuko would have said the same thing, but the Azula now was not the Azula then. She had changed. He was helping her change. 

Azula gasped to life beneath Yue’s healing water, her eyes glowing blue as her flames. 

“Azula,” Zuko said, and then found he couldn’t say anything else. She looked at him, blood staining her lips a brighter crimson than usual, the fire sputtering at her hands. There was a disoriented look in her eyes—she looked lost, and confused, and, for once, as young as her age.

“I—” she started, but burst into a fit of coughing. 

“Stay down,” Yue said, pushing her back with gentle hands. Azula complied, but Zuko thought it was mostly because she had looked down and seen the state of her body, her hands, her everything.

She stared at the blood with a strange look on her face. The air was still except for the sound of her fractured breathing, and Zuko listened to it so closely that he heard when it caught. He looked back at her: tears glistened in her eyes, threatening to spill over.

Zuko leaned forward. He wanted to hug her, but she was frozen and still, and he knew that his sister hated being seen as vulnerable, so he didn’t.

“You’re okay,” he told her instead, softly, and then looked away and pretended he didn’t see the tears starting to slide down her face.

* * *

The small tea shop was devoid of customers and closing for the night when the hawk arrived, sweeping over the walled city of Ba Sing Se under the cover of darkness. The shop owner gave it a glance as it landed on the windowsill, then paused in his sweeping and ushered the bird in. He closed the door and made sure that there was no one around, pulling the curtains shut and turning off the lights.

It was only after this was done that he walked over to the hawk, taking the scroll strapped to its leg and unfurling it. 

_ The Northern Water Tribe has fallen _ , the neat letters read, in a script too elegant for Earth Kingdom characters.  _ The Avatar has fled with your traitorous niece and nephew. It is time to take Ba Sing Se and bring the Earth Kingdom to its knees once and for all. _

There was no signature, but one was not necessary. The tea shop owner frowned at the message, rubbing his gray beard. He gave a long sigh as he reread the words  _ your traitorous niece and nephew _ . He should have stayed with them—this could have all been avoided, if they’d just had a kinder hand to guide their footsteps. His brother’s children had always been destined for greatness, after all. He had just not thought that this would be the type they sought.

In the end, there was no choice but to pin a response, detailing the fact that he had received the contents of the letter and would do as they said. He signed it accordingly, then slipped it back into the carrier and sent the hawk out from the rooftops, watching its dark wings blend into the dark sky, which had been red only days before.

The wall of Ba Sing Se was a dark shadow in the distance, tall and impenetrable. 

For now.

_ End of Book One: Spirits _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And book one is done!!!! I'm really excited to hear your thoughts on this, so please leave a comment or a kudo of some sort (also school just started. I need some love lol). From here on out, it only gets more crazy (and more canon divergent). The next arc is the earth one, which I love for multiple reasons (re: Jet and Mai). 
> 
> Per usual, you can find me on [tumblr ](https://astarlightmonbebe.tumblr.com/) if you have anything to ask, or if you just want to chill. I always get anxious that I sound awkward when I respond to comments, but they really are lovely, so just know that I appreciate every single one, and they always make me smile brilliantly <3


	8. 八

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy (early) Halloween, here's a very belated update. School is super tough this year and doing it virtual doesn't make it any easier, so it's really been draining my energy, but I finally got out of the house and had some caffeine (a mistake, I'm way hyper now), got the rest of this out. Hopefully it doesn't read too choppy - I wrote this over the course of almost two months, so hopefully it's not a total mess. I'm actually really excited for you guys to read this, because despite everything else, I really enjoy some parts of this. Before we begin, though, a HUGE thank you for 220+ subs, almost 9.5k hits, and 400 kudos. Reading all the lovely comments over the past month made me really happy and inspired me to write more, so thank you for that <3\. I've also posted a short recap of what happened in book one in case you're like me and forget what happened in the previous chapter when a fic doesn't update quickly enough, which you can find [ here. ](https://astarlightmonbebe.tumblr.com/post/633447953120493568/in-the-shadow-of-a-flame-book-i-recap)
> 
> Now, for some core four pov, sibling and family angst, and more. Please note that there is canon-typical violence (or maybe a lil more than is explicitly showed? but it's only for a couple paragraphs), some unsavory language, and implied/referenced child abuse in this chapter.

_ Book Two: Earth _

Yue had never felt sunlight so bright before. In the North Pole, the sun was a pale shadow resting on the highest of clouds, far from reach and quick to disappear. The ice never melted there; there was snow year round, and their only season was winter.

The Earth Kingdom was another story all together. The sun beat down on their backs constantly, hanging low enough in the sky that, sometimes, Yue thought she could reach up and touch it. Not only that, but everywhere was  _ green _ . Yue had never seen so many plants. Oh, there had been pictures in the great Northern Water Tribe library. Scrolls of black ink that had illustrated leaves and such, but she had grown up with a palette of blue, white, and gray. There was no green in her color vision, only a dream of what it might resemble.

They had stopped at one town in their journey, where Yue had found a blue tunic after hours of searching, and leggings. They had burned her purple robes, and she had removed her betrothal necklace, instead taking the crest from her hair and hiding it on a string beneath her shirt. 

It had been necessary, but it had felt like she was giving up her culture with every item of clothing shucked off. The two Fire Nation siblings had tried to dissuade her from wearing blue, but Yue had refused. She had abandoned her people—the least she could do was remember them. 

Whenever she thought of the summer solstice at the North Pole, Yue was filled with an anger and guilt so strong it threatened to overtake her. There was a pit of emptiness writhing inside of her, stretching far and wide. She still hadn’t quite processed the devastation that had been wrought: she could bring it to mind, calmly visualize how the Agna Qe’la had fallen apart as if it hadn’t been standing for centuries, could see the fire in the sky, but it was as if she was a distant witness to it all, instead of someone who had lived through it. 

Yue had always lived a sheltered life. She had known this, of course—the Northern Water Tribe was the definition of sheltered, closed off from the rest of the world. No ships traveled that far North because of the weather, and though Yue knew in theory other Nations existed, the closest she had got to seeing them was the occasional mixed child, but those were rare. Before the Avatar’s arrival, she had never met someone who wasn’t Water Tribe. 

Once, several years ago, a ship from the Southern Water Tribe had come, made of shabby wood and handwoven sails. Yue had been eight at the time, training under Healer Yugoda, and not as well versed in the arts of diplomacy and negotiation. She remembered sitting in the chair behind her father, discreetly shaping water between her hands as she’d listened. 

She hadn’t understood, then, their relations with their sister tribe, only that no one had ever visited before, and she had been excited to see what they were like. Yue remembered first feeling disappointment, and a bit of confusion—they looked exactly like the people she saw every day, with their brown skin and brown hair and blue clothing. Their clothing had been more threadbare, but it was still in the blue and white furs her own clothes so often were made of.

“Please, Arnook,” the lead man had said. “The least you can do is offer us aid, if not sanctuary.”

“I can’t, Hakoda,” her father had said, his eyes and voice heavy. 

“You  _ can’t _ ,” the man had repeated, voice sharp and disdainful.

“The Northern Water Tribe’s position is much too precarious,” Arnook had explained. “We cannot afford to—”

“Bullshit,” Hakoda spat, startling Yue, whose water splashed to the ground. Several faces whipped to face her, hands flying to their weapons, and she had ducked her head down, spinning it back up into her hands. The chief’s eyes had softened slightly when he saw it was only her.

“Arnook,” he started, again. “I am willing to ignore the fact that you abandoned us, your  _ sister  _ tribe, for years. Please. I have a daughter, the last waterbender, younger than your own.” Yue felt heat rise to her cheeks as she realized they were looking at her again. She concentrated hard on the water, desperate to not let it slip again. “You know what it is like to fear for your child’s life. We hardly number fifty men and women. The Fire Nation is out for our blood. We— _ I— _ wish to raise my children someplace safe. At the very least—”

Her father held up his hand, effectively silencing the other man. “Our daughters are not the same,” he had said, voice calm. It was the voice he used when he wanted to exercise his authority. “And neither are we. You know the terms of our agreement. They are final.”

“‘Agreement,’” Hakoda scoffed. “There has never been an agreement between our tribes.”

“And there never will be, Hakoda,” Arnook had said. He was angry, Yue could tell, and it made her nervous, though she had never had a reason to be afraid of her father before. He loved her dearly; this, she knew, and this, she could see. 

The man had turned to look at her again. Yue carefully froze the ice into a half finished sculpture in her hands, looking away like her father had instructed her to do whenever someone tried to make eye contact with her.

“I hope she’s worth it,” the Southern chief said, his voice softer than it had ever been before.

“I don’t know what you mean,” her father had replied, his tone sharp and defensive. 

“Until we meet again, Arnook,” Hakoda said, his eyes heavy and sad. “Though I doubt we ever will.” 

He had left, and Yue had watched him go curiously, wondering what the conversation had been about. She hadn’t understood it until many years later, the diplomacy between barbed retorts, the playing for the upper hand. She hadn’t understood, at eight, what the Northern Water Tribe had condoned by turning it’s back on the Southern Water Tribe. Yue had hated it, then, when she had come to understand they had allowed people who looked like them, who bended like them, who  _ lived  _ like them, to be mercilessly hunted and burned to the ground, village after village. She had detested it, despite also understanding why the Northern Water Tribe had chosen to stand tall instead of letting itself be defeated as well.

Then she had gone and turned her back on her people. 

In all honesty, the night had been a blur to Yue, one of pain and fear, acrid in her mouth, blurring her vision. She was unused to fear that tasted like that, as if all the blood in her body had begun to pump twice as fast as usual. She had looked at pictures of war, read the great texts and sources from waterbenders who had seen the beginning of the Fire Nation’s war on the other nations, the genocide of the Air Nomads, etcetera. 

She had seen war, but she had never  _ experienced  _ it before, until it had slammed through their barriers and rained down from the sky. 

One minute Yue had been sure she would die. Her body felt empty and void without the pull of the moon, the feeling of the water responding to her will. 

The next, she had realized with a frightening calm that there was only one way to end this.

Her fingers had brushed the water of the pool, and then there had been a horrible moment where she felt like she was  _ nothing,  _ only a suspension in the air, and then Tui had flooded her body and Princess Yue of the Northern Water Tribe had ceased to exist in favor of being Yue, the Moon Spirit.

It had been thrilling and terrifying all at once. A total loss of control, while also feeling like she was still  _ in  _ control. Yue could only recall fractured pieces of it, but the emotion still roared inside of her everytime she brought it up.

She had well and truly prepared to be gone. It had always been her duty, to give herself up for her people. A part of Yue had always known that, since the moment her parents had told her she had been given a sliver of spirit for her life. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to go, but it was what she had to do. She was a Princess. Her duty was to her people, and her people alone. 

Yue was _ nothing _ if not loyal. 

But the Moon Spirit hadn’t taken her. It had left her, left a part of itself in her body, and vacated the premises, and then she had been told to run, because  _ that  _ was her duty to her people.  _ Leaving  _ them. 

She was filled with disgust at herself for doing so readily, anger at the Fire Nation for taking away the quiet life she had grown up with, and misery at the fact that she did not know if her father was alive, or what would happen to her people now.

And so, for the past week or so, Yue had been flying on a bison over forests and lakes and sand dunes, letting everything inside of her fester, trying to tamper the rage, even though she had never learned how.

Her companions were not one for idle chit chat, not particularly. The Avatar—Ty Lee—was a bright and exuberant girl who never seemed to run out of optimism. She danced around all three of them lightly, always with a question ready, but most of the time she had to focus on steering, and when they set up camp, she resolutely went through the motions of bending with a focused look on her face, no matter how many times she had gotten knocked down. Yue had been attempting to master waterbending with her, and though it came naturally, it was hard for her to weaponize the thing she had been using to save lives all this time. 

(That, and when she waterbent, she could feel the pull of Tui inside her, insistent, responding to the connection with the tide. It threw her off balance, made it hard for her to concentrate.)

Azula and Zuko were another story altogether. Both had been reserved for the last week. Yue had never had time to get to know Azula, who had resolutely made any enemy out of any Water Tribe she talked to, but the other girl had been lacking her usual sharp edges. Her wound was healing nicely, but Yue could tell it had taken a toll on the other girl.

(She had been dead, and then, somehow, Yue and the water had brought her back to life. Yue didn’t want to think too long about it, about the implications of saving someone who had been so far off the ledge they had been practically gone. Zuko had lied about a faint heartbeat, but Yue didn’t even know if he believed it himself.)

Whenever one tried to talk to her, the other girl would lash out, with her sharp tongue and fire, but otherwise she kept to herself, drawn in and gaunt. Zuko had taken to watching her, curled up on the other side of the sky bison, who Yue thought was named Moshi. 

The boy in question had been just as quiet. Yue had always taken him for a more solitary type, but he was funny, and he was intelligent. She had thought they had been almost friends—and La knew she had few of those, if any at all. However, between the worry about his sister, and then the worry about, well, everything else, they hadn’t talked much besides a few, curt exchanges.

That, and Yue was pretty sure he was avoiding her.

She wasn’t sure what to think about the two of them, honestly. She had been apprehensive about letting them in at first, but also excited; they had been strangers, and powerful ones at that. 

Discovering they were children of the Fire Lord that had just decreed her home to be invaded had changed everything, and Yue wished it hadn’t. She wished she was back on Moshi, flying above Agna Qe’la, with the snow touching her skin and the cold air knipping at her clothes. Even a few hours before the attack would have been fine. 

_ You don’t have to understand anything or everything,  _ Zuko had said, but Yue had lied, then. She didn’t understand, not really. On an objective level she did, of course; know why he had lied. Knew it was for their safety, for the relations of her tribe. Yue understood that. Of course she did. She wasn’t a stranger to politics or diplomacy. Objectively, she knew and understood it, but subjectively, there was a hurt pounding in her heart alongside the pain of everything else.

It hurt, because he had intentionally withheld something vitally important. Yue thought of all the times she had mentioned what it was like to be a Princess, and he had politely turned the conversation around, when he had been royalty himself. When they could have been connecting on many deeper levels than just personality wise. 

She was bitter. She was angry. She was devastated. These were all emotions Yue had relatively no experience dealing with; she had always been haunted by a sense of resignation throughout her life, instead of grappling with the unpleasant emotions that accompanied it. Like when her father had told her that she and Hahn were to be betrothed—Yue had wanted to scream, had wanted to ask why  _ she  _ couldn’t be Chief, and hadn’t she proved herself?—but she had only smiled and let Hahn clumsily clasp the necklace around her.

It was her fate, after all.

Fate seemed to have many things planned for Yue. She was helpless in the face of it.

“Moshi, yip yip!” Ty Lee cried from the front of the sky bison. They were starting to head downwards at a steep pace, Yue noted with alarm, and she grabbed the edge of the saddle to keep herself from sliding forward and over the edge.

“What’s going on?” Zuko yelled, craning his neck in a vain attempt to be heard over the wind.

“I don’t know!” Ty Lee yelled back, and she must have used the wind to amplify her voice—an airbending trick, perhaps—because it sounded like she was screaming right in Yue’s ear. “Maybe she’s tried?”

“We’re flying over a  _ swamp _ ,” Zuko screamed, and, sure enough, they were heading down into a thick forest with rivers of blue glittering up at the sky. 

“Fun,” Azula murmured, though her face looked slightly green, either from the speed they were hurtling downwards, or perhaps the aggravation it must be causing her injury. Yue had been tending to it whenever they stopped, but it had literally taken her life—it wasn’t easy to heal, and Azula was twitchy whenever Yue came near her, her lip curling at the water, and their sessions always ending too soon.

“Crash landing will  _ not  _ be fun,” Zuko snapped, looking unusually harried. Yue had figured out that he wasn’t the most comfortable traveling by way of flying sky bison, and his pallor was pale, casting his cheekbones in a sharp light. 

“Sure it won’t,” Azula said. “Maybe this mangy animal has finally died.”

“Shut up,” Zuko hissed. “Ty Lee will kill you if she hears you say that.”

Azula lifted her shoulders, a wince passing across her face, and Zuko’s face relaxed into worry for a short second, before she said, “I don’t care.”

“We’re going to crash!” Ty Lee yelled, spinning back near them to grab her staff. “Brace yourselves, I’m going to try to—”

But whatever she was going to try to do did not happen, because in the next minute Moshi had crashed through the canopy, a branch caught Yue right in her chest, and she was hurled backwards through the air, slamming through a confusing mess of blue sky and leaves before slamming down into murky water.

For a moment, she was drowning, surrounded by the crushing black and brown of the water around her, and then there was the nauseatingly familiar tug in her gut, and Yue spiralled upwards in a torrent of water, breaking the surface with a flailing gasp.

Struggling to find her footing, Yue was shocked when her feet hit stone, and she scrambled forward to find herself on her knees in the shallow water, which now barely reached her waist. There must be a drop off past the point where she currently was. 

Her chest ached, and it was hard to breathe, water still dribbling out of her mouth from where she must have swallowed several mouthfuls. With shaking hands, Yue brought some of the water up from the swamp and separated the filth from it, until it was clear, and then laid it over her chest, feeling the bones knitting themselves back together inside of her. Sweat beaded on her forehead from the effort; and after a few moments she was too exhausted to continue; the water splashed back into the swamp. Her ribs were mostly healed at that point, but there was likely to be a nasty bruise on her stomach.

(Getting slammed by a tree, Yue decided, was a dangerous experience she did not wish to involve herself with again. Her heart was still pounding triple speed, adrenaline shooting up her veins and making her limbs shaky and her body tremble.)

There was a crash and a splash from nearby and Yue started, the water in the river rising with her before she realized she was controlling it, which then caused it to further cover her in muddy silt. She froze, the water settling around her, and listened intently for any more noise.

“Hello?” she called in a faint whisper. The word echoed in the swamp around her, bouncing back in eerily:  _ hello, hello, hello?  _ Yue shivered, suddenly feeling very cold, despite the muggy humidity of the swamp. 

There was a flash of movement at the corner of her eye, and Yue rose to her feet with an ungraceful splash, nearly upending herself all over again with her frantic movement. She blinked, looking around, and saw that there was no sign of human life around her. In fact, she noticed, there was, oddly enough, hardly a sign of  _ anything _ . No birds chirped. No animals crashed through the underbrush. The leaves of the trees waved in the wind and the river burbled slowly, but otherwise the forest was deadly silent.

The hair prickled on the back of Yue’s neck. She suddenly felt entirely exposed.

“Hello?” she asked again, cautiously. An owl hooted in reply, but fell silent as soon as the sound had left it’s beak, leaving more shivers to climb their way up her spine.

Yue drew in a breath. First, she decided, she should attempt to find her way to dry land. Though she stood in water, there was something faintly  _ odd  _ about it. Perhaps it was the muddiness of it—she was used to the clear, crystal shores of the Northern Water Tribe, where the ice melted away into water clean enough to drink immediately.

Picking up her sodden skirts—or lack thereof, as Earth Kingdom clothing was much less burdensome than the furs of the Northern Water Tribe; in fact, Yue was still getting used to not having to push forward with strength through snow and ice—she began to trek forward, stepping carefully. She could feel the sharp rocks at the bottom of the swamp through the thin material of her sandals, which had been ripped and torn up a bit, as well as unpleasant underwater plants brushing at her exposed skin and setting her further on edge. 

After what seemed to be forever, Yue finally reached the bank of the swamp, and was able to pull herself out. For a moment, the watery plants seemed to curl around her ankles, causing her too trip on her way out and then unceremoniously land hard against a tree, bruising her elbows. She tore her feet out of the water, losing a sandal in the process—it sunk back into the murky depths as if pulled by a vine, and Yue didn’t wish to linger on it. 

Instead, she got to her feet and started to tromp across the ground, wincing as her feet sunk into the mud. Light filtered in through the canopy, but it was such a thick mess of green that it gave the feel of being much later in the day than Yue knew it to be. 

There was a crash in the brush nearby, and Yue whirled, seeing a glimpse of humanoid movement through the trees, and what she thought was the familiar glimpse of silver sheathes. She immediately took off after it, despite the thorns that pricked through her feet and stabbed at her arms and eyes. 

(The forest, Yue noted, seemed out to get her for whatever reason. Vines tugged at her ankles as she moved, and if she stayed in one place for longer than a second, she started to sink down into the bog. It was as if the swamp was some sort of sentient being. Yue was no stranger to spiritual superstitions or sentience, but it was still unsettling. This was not like the Northern Lights. This was something  _ else _ , and she had yet to determine if it was good or bad. Tui wasn’t helping either; she was dormant again, after sending Yue out of the water.)

The figure, Yue noticed, had stopped up ahead, in plain sight. She realized, elation skipping through her heart, that it was indeed Zuko—she recognized the set of his shoulders and the dual dao swords slung across them, his hair falling out of his inelegant topknot. 

“Zuko!” she called, splashing forward a bit recklessly. 

There was no response. In fact, there was no indication that he had heard her at all, even though his name had echoed as if it was bouncing against the tree trunks.

“Zuko?” Yue asked more hesitantly, moving forward with slight trepidation. He was standing stock still she noticed, barely moving in the breeze that had begun to rush through the bog. A shiver ran up her spine, leaving goosebumps on her arms.

He was a foot away from her now. Yue swallowed and said, “Zuko!”

He did not turn around.

Worrying her lip between her teeth, Yue let go of her skirts to reach a tentative hand forward, to touch his shoulder, only to find her hand pass through. She yelped, yanking it back, and it was at that moment the Not-Zuko turned, revealing a skeletal face with a white bone smile on his lips, the leathery tissue of his scar now burning as if it had been lit anew, cracking and blistering and bubbling blood. She swore she could see the shadow of a flame still beneath his skin, dancing across the sockets of her eyes.

Yue felt her mouth open, but no scream came out. She fell backwards and landed in shallow water with a splash, her fingers sinking down into the silt that lined the floor.

Zuko stared down at her, and then, in a blinding flash of light that made her throw a hand over her eyes, he vanished.

As if he had never been.

* * *

Everything ached. Azula blinked up at the sky above her, crisscrossed with offending branches, several of which had scratched her on the way down. Her wound ached, like it was splitting open and—

( _ Don’t fucking think about it.  _ Don’t.)

She reached up and touched her face, carefully. There was a scratch across her cheek, which made her grimace and press her lips into a flat line. Appearance, father had always said, was the most important thing, and Azula had to be perfect, not scratched and muddied like some peasant. She was the Fire  _ Princess,  _ after all.

For some reason, the thought didn’t bring her as much comfort as it usually did. Azula decided to blame it on the near death experience, which put a damper on just about everything these days.

(If she said it was near death, she could laugh about it, laugh about how  _ scared  _ Zuzu had been, how he had been so desperate to defend her honor. If Azula said it was near death, she could dwell on vengeance and anger and all the other twisted emotions that  _ belonged  _ to her. It was easy to spin a near death experience into perspective—she had survived it, after all.)

(Easier to brush it off like the bothersome fly that it was than to think about how it had felt to have her bones split apart, to lay helplessly on the ground and feel her life bleeding out in erratic bursts of red blood—)

(Don’t think about it don’t  _ think about it. _ )

She sat up. It hurt, but Azula was good at gritting her teeth. Oh, she knew Zuko thought he was some kind of champion for his ability to live through his extremely painful life as a nonbender, but Azula had mastered firebending, and it had left a few burns on her body, ones that she had had to hide from her father, which only made them more painful. She, too, could grit her teeth and  _ live  _ with it.

She tried not to think about how Zuko had also been burned a few times, to considerably worse degrees, because that led to pity, and even if Azula loved her brother, she would never allow herself to admit that she loved him because she was worried about him.

Love. Azula hated that word. It was nothing but a word that she used to label emotions that weren’t really love, because love could hardly be real. 

She didn’t  _ love  _ Zuko, she decided. She was loyal to him. There was some semblance of a difference.

Zuko was also nowhere to be seen. Azula frowned, and realized that she was very much alone in the center of some sort of disgusting and deplorable swamp.

That was not ideal.

She rose to her feet, trying not to think about the muck and grime that was sticking to her clothes and sliding down her back. She had landed half submerged in some kind of bog, her hair tangled in the roots of a tree, and it was only after a few bursts of fire—which seemed to aggravate the vines, as if they were sentient or something crazy like that—and hacking with a slightly bent knife that Azula was able to fully free herself from the undergrowth. It left her hair in a tangled mess, though, which was a fright she would have to deal with later.

An owl hooted. Azula flinched, then immediately wished she hadn’t—that was weak. She never flinched. It was why she was father’s favorite, after all: She didn’t get scared, not like Zuzu. She knew not to show fear. 

(She’d learned that only from watching Zuko, of course. He’d been scared, and so she’d figured out quickly enough that she couldn’t be scared, or she would end up like him. He had told her as much, when they used to sleep in the same bed when one of them got frightened. But five and six year old Azula hadn’t yet understood the advantage she had over her brother, who couldn’t make sparks or flame like she could, no matter how much their mother told their father he would be able to, eventually.)

A word echoed throughout the trees, bouncing off branches, but by the time it reached Azula’s ears, it was only a faint rendition of the sound it might have been, and she only looked around sharply. There was no cracking of tree branches or crushing of leaves to indicate movement from afar, or splashing from the river. Everything was still and silent and she was alone.

Azula didn’t like being alone much. It was one of the reasons she had decided to join Zuko on his little expedition. She had been bored and lonely in the palace. Nobody she had gone to school with was at the social level acceptable to befriend royalty, and all of the students were scared of her, probably because she was so bored that she spent her days terrorizing them just to get a laugh.

Really, people still acted surprised at what she did when she was desperate to feel alive. As if they weren’t all also seekers of several things; in Azula’s case, those things being sadistic thrills and her father’s praise. 

(Also Zuko’s laugh and a smile, because those had become rarities as they got older. Azula had used to make a game of it, to see how often she could get his lips to quirk upwards, until he had begun to catch on and think she  _ cared  _ about him, or something silly like that, so she had taken to games to see how often she could make him frown.) 

(She was much better at those games.)

The light through the trees flickered. Azula frowned at it in the distance, tilting her head. She felt quite light headed all of the sudden, dizzy and confused. Her internal compass was shifting constantly—north was in front of her, then behind her, then on her left, despite her never moving. The fact that she knew it was accurate was the most maddening part of it.

The swamp was wrong, Azula decided. Very wrong. She wanted to set it alight, but old superstitions held her back. Zuko would say something like, ‘you can’t disrespect the spirits, Lala,’ but he wasn’t here, so Azula toyed with the idea of disrespecting the maybe nonexistent spirits just for fun. 

The light shifted again, and Azula narrowed her eyes. It was catching in an odd way, almost as if it was drifting over the form of somebody standing with their back to her, and once she thought that, it became abundantly clear that that was what was occurring. 

She blinked, still feeling rather light headed (which was bad, and annoying, but mastering firebending had not taught her how to master headaches, because Fire Nation Princesses didn’t get something as lowly as a migraine). There was a strange sensation flooding through her, one of almost, recognition— 

The shadow turned, form solidifying, and Azula caught the edge of a smile, hair falling in a rippling wave of black, exactly the color of Azula’s own, red robes bright in the soft green and gold of the forest. There was a half crown in her hair, a hairpin slid through it elegantly. Azula could tell, even from this distance, that there was a smile on her lips, that she was laughing at something gently, soundlessly.

_ “Mom _ ,” she said, the word tearing its way out of her throat, and then she was running forward before she could tell her treacherous feet to stop, running forward— 

_ As if she was five years old, running throughout the corridor of the Palace, chasing after the hem of her mother’s robes. “Mom!” she had yelled, catching up and grabbing them. “Why won’t you  _ play  _ with me?” _

_ Her mother had turned, a gentle smile on her face. “I must see to your brother, Azula.” A hand, resting on the top of Azula’s head, gently patting her hair, which hadn’t grown long enough to be  _ properly  _ put up. “He has been badly hurt.” _

_ Azula pouted. “Zuzu’s always hurt,” she complained. “If he could just firebend, then everything would be better, but he can’t, because he’s a baby.” (She had heard her father say that many times, when he argued with their mother, or yelled at her older brother. Firebending was the best, after all, and Azula didn’t understand why her brother couldn’t just  _ do  _ it.) _

_ Her mother’s mouth had hardened into a thin line, before slipping back into a soft smile. “That’s not kind,” she said. “It’s not Zuko’s fault.” _

_ Azula rolled her eyes. “Play with me,” she repeated. “No one else will.” _

_ But her mother was already lifting her hand from Azula’s head, the weight vanishing (and leaving Azula wishing it would come back), turning to go. “Your brother needs me right now, Azula,” she had said, and that wasn’t  _ fair _ , because Zuko was always the one her mother chose, in the end.  _

_ Azula ducked her head, feeling hot tears pricking at her eyes, even though her father said she couldn’t cry like other girls, because she was  _ his  _ little girl. She gripped harder at the robes, feeling anger boil in her gut (father said that anger was good, that she should use it to be even stronger). _

_ Her mother screamed. Azula opened her eyes and saw that the red robes had caught with fire, burning up to her mother’s lovely, pale, skin. Ursa was not a firebender—she could only flail away with terror in her eyes. _

_ A few tears slipped down Azula’s cheeks—it occurred to her that this was the expected response, even as a servant came running with a pitcher of water, and the other firebenders tried to suck the fire away.  _

_ It looked like her mother would be unable to visit Zuko today. _

_ (At this, Azula hid a smile.) _

“Mom!” Azula cried, and Ursa turned, her eyes lighting up with something Azula recognized as the motherly love so many other people had talked about. There were tears in her eyes, or something of the sort. Her mother opened her arms, and Azula gasped, reaching forward— 

Only to crash into a tree, smacking her forehead against it and going down in a completely inelegant way.

Azula sat on the ground, panting for breath, her head feeling like it was splitting open, her ribs feeling like they were splitting open  _ again _ . 

It had been a trick of the light, she realized, and when she was able to rationally conclude that, she felt ridiculous and hateful. Of course it hadn't been Ursa. Ursa had never cared about her; she had thought Azula was a monster, and she was right. Azula had always been a monster. She didn’t care what other people felt, and she didn’t understand why they felt how they felt—she didn't even know why her eyes watered sometimes; pain was a numb, registered aftermath; sometimes she felt fluttering in her chest that didn’t belong there, and it would scare her, if she knew fear, which she didn’t.

Azula clenched her teeth together and  _ screamed _ , exhaling bright blue fire from her nose. She lashed out, furious, punching fire at the tree in front of her with senseless fury.

(Fury she understood. Fury made  _ sense _ . Anger and hatred and everything that went along with it made perfect fucking sense to her. All the other emotions were useless, for weak people like Zuko and Ty Lee and—and Ursa; Azula didn’t know.)

She laughed. She had thought her mother loved her! Ursa, who always had fear and disgust in her eyes whenever she saw Azula, when she thought Azula wasn’t looking. Or, or even when she was looking! Oh, she smiled, with her pretty red lips, but she had stopped stroking Azula’s hair long ago, had stopped caring about her. 

Zuko had always been the favorite. He was the weak one, the one who  _ needed  _ a mother. Azula looked like Ursa, but everyone told her she looked more like her father, that Zuko was the one who resembled their mother. What a lie. She looked like her father because she had the same look in her eyes, one that Azula had prided herself on mastering. Zuko was their mother’s favorite because he was the one she could soften. She hadn’t liked Azula’s hard edges, and she had condemned her for them:  _ Her own mother had thought she was a monster, and Azula had set her on fire, so maybe she had been right even before Azula had known herself.  _

That wasn’t the part that Azula hated, though, her mother’s false smile and her kind eyes. No, she hated herself most of all. Stupid Azula, who had run at Ursa and called her ‘mom,’ as if she had truly loved the woman, or believed the woman loved her. A desperate child, looking for someone to hold her once again, even though she had outgrown that years and years ago.

A  _ weak  _ child, searching for love that she couldn’t even explain. Love was a  _ weakness _ . It was a  _ weakness and it  _ hurt.

Azula slammed out at the tree again, shaking off the vines. When she opened her eyes, the imprint of her fist was imprinted in black on the trunk, smoking and smoldering still. She looked at it for a long moment, tilting her head. It had been an act of senselessness, she knew, acting out her impulses, but they had come from weakness, of her own self hatred.

She stood. Exhaled. Let the emotions simmer in her stomach (at the place where she had been stabbed), let them boil into rage and anger, melting everything else away. Then, she inhaled, held her breath for the count of five, and then exhaled fiery flames. Around her, the forest caught blue and electric; it sounded as if the vines were shrieking.

Azula let her head fall back and  _ laughed,  _ reveling in it: destruction with a purpose. 

* * *

Moshi was nowhere to be seen. 

Well, neither was anyone else, but Ty Lee fixated on the mysterious disappearance of her sky bison first, panic flooding through her. She listened, intently, but there was no other sound in the forest, which was worrying. A sky bison weighed quite a lot, meaning one would make quite a crash if they were to land in a forest, but there was no snapping of branches or sound shattering splashes.

Ty Lee rose to her feet, a ball of wind making quick work of the mud and leaves clinging to her. Her staff, she saw, was standing upright in the swamp a few feet away, and Ty Lee slogged her way through the silt to grab it. It took a moment of tugging—for some reason, the bog seemed determined to keep hold of it. Finally, though, she succeeded, and spun it out, examining the wings and satisfied to find them without damage. 

She walked over to the riverbank, trying to calm her stuttering heart, which was beating faster and faster with every perceived danger and anguish that could have occurred to Moshi or her friends. 

She tried to remember what had happened in detail, seeing if it could give her a clue where she was in relation to, say,  _ everyone else _ . They had been flying, and then Moshi had started a downwards dip. That had been unusual, because she was used to flying long distances, and they had been getting adequate rest time. It was very unlike Moshi to simply give up on flying, and yet she had remained unresponsive. In a final bid, Ty Lee had attempted to create an air cushion, but she was now under the impression that she had caused the sky bison’s occupants to fly to the four winds instead.

That wasn't good. She would have to try and do some reconnaissance on her own, then. Testing the wind, Ty Lee sent out a faint tremor, getting nothing in response. It only brushed against the trunks of trees and vines, stretching and stretching without feeling a human presence. She tried to summon her inner fire, remembering Azula saying something about how she could sense when other firebenders were nearby, but found her insides frustratingly cold, no warmth flickering through them. Too tired to try and meditate, she instead tried to call on her spiritual connection—Yue still had Tui in her, whatever that meant, exactly, and maybe Ty Lee could reach her.

Nothing. Ty Lee let out a frustrated sigh and sank down into a seated position, driving her hands through her hair, which was falling out of her braid again. The monks had always chided her on her impatience—but then again, Ty Lee had never listened too them much, because they  _ always  _ found problems with her personality, just like everyone else. (Ironic, how she tried so hard to cultivate a winning personality, only to be met with criticisms even then. People were hard to please, but Ty Lee tried too hard anyways.)

She stood, exhaling and pretending she was letting out all the negative emotions with it. The trees were thick, but she spotted a nice patch of grass up ahead, which would be ideal for taking off. Making her way towards it, Ty Lee found herself avoiding many snaking vines—and were vines supposed to move? Granted, there hadn’t been many forests up on the mountains, just lots of empty space, but Ty Lee was pretty sure plants only grew, not moving on their own accord.

Maybe forests, too, had changed in a hundred years. Ty Lee wouldn’t put it past the world at this point.

(A familiar aching opened in her chest, like a cavity that sucked all the wind away, leaving her alone and afraid. It was an aching that spoke of pain and being out of place, a lack of belonging. Ty Lee wasn’t made for this world, no matter what fate or destiny had to say about it. She was too out of time, too out of space. It lingered in the back of her mouth like a bad taste, a reminder every time she had a gap in her memory about something that everyone else recognized and knew about.)

Reaching the clearing, Ty Lee planted both her feet firmly on the ground, twisting the glider behind her, fingers wrapping around the bars. It was familiar, but in a good way, unlike the cavity, and it made her feel a little more at home. 

Inhaling deeply, feeling the sensation of too much air filling her body up, as if she’ll float right off the ground, Ty Lee took off at a run, taking three great bounding leaps before exhaling a big woosh of air and sending herself flying upwards at a sharp, almost ninety degree, tilt. She shot upwards, breaking through a few stray branches with the familiar exhilaration of flying. It was a feeling that never got old, not for her, the feeling of wind first hitting her face and her body leaving the ground effortlessly, as if gravity no longer had any hold on her.

For a second, Ty Lee hung suspended in the brilliant blue sky, and then a vine shot out of the canopy and wrapped around her ankle, pulling her back to the bog with a shriek and a crash. 

She slammed through three layers of foliage, her glider making an awful cracking noise that told her one of the wings was definitely broken, before slamming into the ground hard enough to break bone, if she hadn’t managed to cushion herself slightly. Still, it hurt, and Ty Lee rose with a moan, disentangling herself from the remains of one of her glider’s wings. Thankfully, the actual staff wasn’t damaged; though Ty Lee lamented the destruction of one of her few possessions.

From the surrounding forest, there was a laugh. It was sharp and far from kind of even playful, but it sounded dreadfully amused at her predicament, dry and savage. 

“Who’s there?” Ty Lee called, leaping to her feet immediately with a frown, brandishing her broken glider in front of her like the weapon it was technically supposed to be.

The laugh came again. It was closer this time, and Ty Lee didn’t wait for whoever it was to find her, crashing forward with the intention to find them first. It wasn’t Zuko’s laugh—the voice was certainly female. It wasn’t Yue’s; her voice was too soft. It could be Azula, but a part of Ty Lee knew it wasn’t, no matter how dry Azula’s voice was. Azula laughed like a maniac. Her laughs somehow managed to be condescending when they weren’t high pitched and murderous; they didn’t carry this particular hint of amusement, though they certainly sounded similar.

Bursting through the trees, Ty Lee saw a flash of green. It was a girl, dressed in Earth Kingdom clothes: a skirt slit up the sides, leggings, and a cropped shirt, her knuckles wrapped in bandages. Ty Lee caught the swing of black hair, the glint of gold eyes, and then the girl had turned and took off at an effortless run, ducking through the trees and leaping across rocks.

Without waiting or even taking a moment to think, Ty Lee took off after her.

“Hey, wait!” she yelled, sliding through the brush and narrowly missing slamming headfirst into a tree. “Wait! I’m lost, can you—” The girl was moving exceptionally fast, and Ty Lee was breathless trying to keep up—the light kept flashing at odd intervals and angles, and the girl seemed to vanish, only to reappear further out of reach.

“Hey, stop!” Ty Lee tried again. “I’m not going to hurt you, I swear—” A branch slapped her across the face and nearly swept her off her feet. Her nose crunched, and Ty Lee felt blood running down her cheeks, but she paid no heed to it, sliding across wet underbrush and using the wind to prevent another tree catastrophe.

The girl threw a look over her shoulder, black hair bouncing and catching gold in the setting sun. She laughed, harsh and dry and vindictive. Ty Lee frowned, rounded a bend, and promptly slammed straight into someone else who was running from a perpendicular direction; they both fell back, only to hit something else and land in a tangled heap on the ground.

She screeched on instinct, scrambling for her staff and her footing in one very uncoordinated motion, only managing to get to her feet with sheer acrobatic skill, old reflexes from when her mother had trained her and her sister as children on how to be nimble and flexible. She turned, prepared to blast whoever it was into the sky, only for Zuko’s startled eyes—or eye, really, as his scar was pulled taut around the slit of his left one—to meet her own, his swords raised with a clash in front of his face.

“Oh, Ty Lee,” he said. He sounded breathless, and when she took a closer look, she noticed his face was pale and a sheen of sweat glimmered on it, giving him a sick and feverish look. His hands were twitching too, as he repeatedly flexed his grip, and there was a shake to his shoulders that had never been there before—Zuko instinctively curled up or puffed himself out, depending on how he perceived the threat, but he never let himself look  _ defeated _ .

“What’s wrong?” she asked, just a groan alerted them to their third companion. Ty Lee glanced down and saw green clothing, thinking, for a moment, that she had caught up with the girl, only to register the deep brown skin and vibrant white hair tinged blue and purple as Yue picked herself up off the ground. Her eyes held a haunted look, and when she saw Zuko she jumped back a step, before reaching out and poking him in the shoulder.

Zuko jolted, blades snapping out, and Yue yelped, the water from the bog raising in a muddy wall before they both had the sense to come into the reality of their surroundings, Zuko quickly swishing his swords away to a place at his hip and Yue letting the wall fall as gracefully as possible, though muddy water still splashed over their already dirtied clothes.

“Did you see a girl come through here?” Ty Lee cut in, regaining control of her heartbeat. 

“No,” Yue said, and Zuko shook his head a moment later, still looking slightly vacant, yet hypervigilant, his eyes darting around nervously.

“Are you alright?” Ty Lee asked again, then, “And where’s your sister?”

“I-I don’t know,” Zuko managed. He swallowed, hard.

“There’s something wrong with this forest,” Yue said, her voice quiet, yet still carrying on the wind. “It’s  _ wrong _ . Something spiritual is afoot here, making us all see things.” She hesitated, looking at them each. “Right?” 

“You saw things too?” Zuko asked, voice hesitant. 

“I saw you,” Yue responded, a frown creasing the brow of her face. “But it wasn’t  _ you _ .”

Zuko exhaled; there was a tremor to his breathing, a shakiness he couldn’t quite rid himself of. “I saw someone too,” he admitted, quietly, though Ty Lee had already garnered as much.

“Who?” she asked, the word quick and eager on her lips. She was always desperate to know just about everything—a flaw, not being able to bite her tongue. 

Zuko’s eyes flickered away, darting nervously. “...My father,” he said, licking his lips. There it was again: the shake of his hands over the hilt of his swords, when Ty Lee  _ knew  _ that he gripped his swords in order to  _ stop  _ them from trembling. 

“So you both saw someone you knew?” Ty Lee asked, trying to redirect the conversation—Yue was looking at Zuko curiously, like cogs were spinning in her brain, and Ty Lee doubted this was the time or place for a conversation about the questionable kindness of the Fire Lord, or what sort of father he had been. Zuko and Azula had hardly mentioned him; in fact, Ty Lee’s information about the Fire Lord had come more from the other Avatars than either of them, and they were almost infuriatingly tight lipped about the details.

Though Ty Lee didn’t need words to confirm her suspicions. She had eyes for that, and she had been using them.

“Didn’t you?” Zuko asked. His eyes were slowly clearing, as if he was coming back down to earth.

She shook her head. “I saw a girl.” She frowned. “I didn’t recognize her.”

“Strange,” Zuko commented, his gaze drifting away again, scanning the treetops sharply. “None of you have heard from Azula? Or seen her? Or know what happened to her?”

Yue opened her mouth to say something, but they were all cut off by a scream from the west and a flickering of blue fire across the river, like a mirage.

Zuko’s expression turned grim. “That would be her,” he said, taking off quickly, skipping across the rocks that sprinkled the river with ease. Ty Lee exchanged a look with Yue, who was chewing on her lip and looking quite worried, and then the two of them took off across the river after their wayward companion, who was darting quite fast for someone who had been unsteady on his feet only moments earlier.

As they got closer, Ty Lee began to feel the burn of flame, Azula’s signature electric blue fire cutting through swathes of forest in spinning circles. She could hardly identify where it began, as the trees and vines were a rushing, hectic mess around her, as if they were repulsed yet also rebelling against the invader.

“Azula!” Zuko yelled, throwing himself through the first circle in a neat bundle of limbs. Ty Lee followed a little more cautiously, parting the fire around her in a wave, and directing it away from Yue, who wisely stopped out of the way.

The Fire Princess was surrounded by waves of flame, an expression of terror twisted across her face. Ty Lee swore her eyes were alight with it, her hair falling raggedly from it’s usual impeccable bun. She lashed out blindly, lacking any of the restraint or discipline she had ingrained into Ty Lee’s bones.

Zuko cursed, another one that Ty Lee didn’t recognize—but then again, she had figured out pretty quickly that her idea of language was pretty outdated—and then, without waiting for an opening, simply dove right through the fire and tackled his sister into the muddy ground.

Azula thrashed, letting out an inhuman screech, and rolled over on top of her brother, who yelped, his swords banging into the trunk of a tree. 

“AZULA!” he yelled, and she stopped moving minutely, shoving herself away from the ground and into a sitting position. Ty Lee watched her look around with a rather frazzled expression, hair hanging in a jagged line in front of her hardened bronze colored eyes.

Zuko sat up. Mud was smeared across the half of his face that didn’t feature his burn, making for quite a ghastly picture. “What,” he gasped. “Are you  _ doing _ ?”

“She wouldn’t leave me alone,” Azula mumbled, looking still as if she was far away from her senses. Her lips twisted into a scowl. “ _ Mother _ .”

Zuko’s face went slack. “Oh, Lala,” he breathed, exhaling heavily. He suddenly looked exhausted, his face drawn, as if shutters had closed over his face and shut all the emotions out.

Azula looked away, anger still writhing beneath the surface of her face. “She always loved you more,” she spat. “She won’t leave. Me.  _ Alone _ .”

“It was just the swamp,” Zuko said, rising unsteadily to his feet. “I—it made us all see hallucinations.”

“I know!” Azula snapped. “I  _ know  _ it wasn’t  _ her _ . It could  _ never  _ be her.” Her face blanked. “She never loved me. She thought I was a monster.”

“You’re not—” Zuko started, but Azula cut him off.

“And she was right, of course. I am a monster. She was scared of me.” Her voice was soft, silky and smooth, and it made Ty Lee want to take a step back. “And she was right to be afraid. Being a monster isn’t a bad thing. If people are scared of you, they don’t hurt you.”

Zuko tipped his head back, staring up at the leaves. Ty Lee watched him mouth something, as if he was counting beneath his breath, before he let his head fall back. Ty Lee suddenly realized that, perhaps, she was intruding upon something she should not be a witness to, but she didn’t know how to leave without drawing their attention to her presence.

“I saw the Fire Lord,” he murmured. Azula looked at him, her brow furrowing and eyes narrowing. 

“Did you,” she said, flatly. 

“Mm,” Zuko hummed. “He was—it wasn’t him.”

“I know,” Azula said. The flames were starting to flicker and finally go out; Yue had been dowsing them repeatedly, and it looked like the swamp had also taken the opportunity to try and overtake the destructive force working against it. She curled in on herself, looking small. 

“Come on,” Zuko said, gently urging her to her feet. “It was only a...a dream.” 

_ A dream _ , Ty Lee thought, but it hadn’t felt like a dream at all. More like a hazy premonition of what was to come—or, more accurately,  _ who _ . 

“Someone's coming!” Yue called, finally daring a few steps closer as she tampered the few stray sparks that hadn’t been swallowed by the swamp. 

“Where?” Ty Lee asked, looking around wildly.

Yue caught up to them, pushing her hair back from where it stuck to her face from sweat. “Through the water,” she said. “I felt the current change. There are...not boats, but rafts? Or something of the sort parting it. They’re small, but there’s a few of them.”

“You can sense all that?” Ty Lee asked in awe. She could do something similar with airbending, but she had never considered it extending to water.

“Well, I had a lot of time to practice,” Yue said. “They wouldn't let me fight, so I trained myself to be delicate with it. With a gentle enough hand, you can sense exactly what part of the body has been injured, where a bone has gained a hairline fracture, or a tendon severed in a hand.” She smiled lightly, as if lost in a memory. “It’s not just magic water, you know.”

Ty Lee flushed. She  _ had  _ been under the assumption healing was something like magic water. It glowed and everything, after all. 

“Let’s take them out,” Azula hissed, a characteristic bloodthirsty look gleaming in her eyes.

“Woah,” Zuko said, holding his hands up. “Let’s hide first, okay?”

“Where, in the trees?” Azula scoffed. 

“Yes,” Zuko deadpanned. “As you can see, there are many of them.”

Yue sighed, then stepped back into the shadows of a trunk, the vines wrapped around the hem of her skirt, making it look like she was disappearing into the muddy ground. “Twenty seconds,” she said, holding up two fingers. “Either stand there looking like a target, or at least try to get out of range if they have weapons. We don’t know whose land we’re on. We could be trespassing.”

“I don’t think anyone would live here,” Zuko mumbled, but he guided his sister out of the way anyways, motioning for Ty Lee to follow without looking back. She tucked her glider behind her back and darted across the bog with a puff of air to keep her shoes from being sucked off by the mud.

Ducking behind a tree that didn’t try to murder her, Ty Lee peeked around as she saw the beginning of the skiffs Yue had mentioned peek over the horizon line, gliding down the river in hazy detail as they got closer and closer. She could make out a few shapes on the boats, moving back and forth in a swaying motion, looking relatively nude minus a few palm leaves.

“It looks like...only a couple people,” Ty Lee murmured.

“I think they’re waterbending,” Zuko put in. His eyes were narrowed, a hand wrapped around the hilts of his dual dao blades. Always ready for a battle, Zuko was. Ty Lee supposed it was either a good habit, or a paranoid one that had been conditioned into him. 

“Out here? In the Earth Kingdom?” she asked, peering closer. It did indeed look like the strange swaying the people were doing was moving the water in smooth currents on either side of the boats. She frowned. “Did the river even have a current before now?”

“Who knows,” Azula drawled. “Were you swimming in it?”

“Shush!” Yue hissed, one brown finger raised to her lips, where her eyes were flinty. She had popped the cork of the pouch they had bought during their one shopping trip in the Earth Kingdom, water spilling out in the air over her fingers. 

“Honestly, they look harmless,” Azula grumbled, flexing her fingers. A puff of blue flame appeared. “Maybe we could—”

“ _ No _ ,” Zuko growled.

“You’re about to fight them anyways,” she said with a sigh, not bothering to control her volume, even as the boats drifted closer and closer, enough so that Ty Lee could make out every detail of the swamp men and their belongings. “Why does it matter if I set their little boats aflame? They’re in a  _ river _ .”

“Do you want this bog to eat us?” Zuko snapped back. “Because it nearly killed you.”

“It did  _ not _ nearly  _ kill  _ me,” Azula spat, but though the words should have sounded sarcastic, maybe funny, there was a hard bite to them, filled with vitriol and wrath. Zuko tensed, his body stiffening into a straight line and his eyes flicking away before he caught himself and visibly forced himself to relax. Azula’s eyes flickered away and Ty Lee quickly pretended that she was looking out across the water fingers fiddling with the end of her braid. 

“Hey,” she said, suddenly, noticing something that rested in a bundle on the boat. “Hey, that’s Moshi’s fur.”

“Ty Lee—” Zuko started, but she had already crashed out, a slam of wind knocking the surprised swampbenders from their boats. They surfaced a second later, but Ty Lee had already grabbed the bundle of fur, running her fingers across the soft texture.

“Where did you get this?” she demanded, perched on the hull of one of their boats, shaking it at them. One of the men blinked up at her languidly, looking slightly like the monks who had used to sneak hallucinogenic flowers at night had done when they were on top of their highs. 

“Ty  _ Lee,”  _ Zuko yelled, coming up on the bank behind her. “They could be dangerous.”

“They don’t look dangerous,” Yue murmured, the water still hovering discreetly in her hands. Ty Lee had to agree, but she could only see Moshi’s fur, which meant that Moshi had been  _ here _ , and that someone had done something to her.

“ _ Where _ ,” she demanded. “Did you get this?!”

“Man,” one of the benders slurred, lazily floating on his back with a sweep of his hand through the current. “We found it.”

“Where’s the animal it came from?” she asked, feeling her heart pounding in her chest. Moshi was supposed to be  _ safe _ , and Ty Lee had already lost her.

The benders exchanged wary glances. “What animal?” one of them tried, and Ty Lee felt her heartbeat speed up, her vision going white at the edges.

“Tell me!” she screamed, her fist clenching around the fur as the wind picked up. If they had  _ hurt  _ Moshi she would kill them, spirits be damned.

“We-we don’t know!” the first swampbender stuttered, raising his hands in a way that was supposed to be placating, but did nothing to calm Ty Lee. She could feel Zuko and Yue exchange worried glances behind her back, but it was a vague observation, something she distantly collected but didn’t process as happening in the present. 

“Yes, you  _ do _ ,” she snarled, the water splashing up against the boat as it tipped dangerously beneath her. “Now tell me, before I blow your boats to pieces.”

They looked unimpressed beneath the nervousness. Ty Lee took a deep breath, and suddenly the skiff furthest from her rose in a tunnel of water, exploding into a thousand tiny shards. She felt a tinge of pain at destroying the careful handiwork, but she needed answers.

“Alright, alright!” one of the swampbenders cried, raising his hands in surrender. “We found the animal, but all we took was it’s fur! We didn’t do no harm to it, we swear.”

“Then where is she?” Ty Lee asked, feeling like she was about to cry—the tears welled in the back of her throat, threatening to choke her up.

“We sold her downriver,” one of the men mumbled quickly. “We don’t have her no more. She’s long gone by now.”

For a minute, Ty Lee was perfectly still.

Then, she stopped seeing.

(Ty Lee was accustomed to the surge of power that came with the Avatar State by now. She didn’t think she was supposed to be—after all, it was supposed to be used for great occasions, not petty lapses in emotions. But ever since waking up in the ice, it was like Ty Lee had lost all the control the monks had so carefully tried to teach her, even before they told her she was the Avatar.)

(This was that, water rising in torrents around her as the air surrounded her in a protective circle, her feet leaving the ground. If she had any control left, it was gone the moment power rushed through her unadulterated and all consuming.)

(It was wrong, Ty Lee knew, to like how power felt, but it made her feel  _ different _ . Like she was more than what she was, and growing up, Ty Lee had always been  _ less  _ than herself, so being more felt like mattering. And it was power. It was the feeling of being strong, even with control out of her hands. Oh, the monks had preached of the dangers of power, and Ty Lee knew it was dangerous, being the Avatar, especially a girl like her, who didn’t actually know anything. Sure, she had spent her whole life practicing emotional regulation, but she didn’t know who she was without that. She didn’t know how to live with no one telling her what to do.)

(Power felt good. It shouldn’t, but it did.)

Distantly, someone said her name, but once again, Ty Lee heard but did not register the words. It was hard to explain what the Avatar State was, but she wasn’t just Ty Lee anymore, and she wasn’t the Avatar either. She was lost somewhere in between, and whether that was what was supposed to happen, or only happened because she didn’t know how to handle the Avatar State well at all, Ty Lee didn’t know.

“-LEE!” someone yelled, and the next thing Ty Lee knew pain burned up her body and she collapsed into the swamp before she could slow her descent, crashing into the muddy water and slamming into the silt covered bottom, momentarily choking on it before she flailed her way up to the surface, surprised to find she could stand in it, the water rising to her shoulders.

Seven pairs of eyes stared at her, four of them being the owlishly high swamp men. She spat out a strand of kelp, picking out what appeared to be a crabfish from her hair. It was kind of cute, swishing it’s little silvery fins at her, if one ignored the snapping pincers that currently had a strand of her hair in them. Ty Lee set it back in the water, then slogged her way out. 

It was only when she got to the shore that she registered the pinching pain in her leg. Looking down, Ty Lee saw her pant leg had been destroyed around her calf, the skin blistering and red. She frowned, looking up at Azula, who was also looking with narrowed eyes. There was something appreciative in her eyes.

“Your handiwork?” she asked.

“You weren’t snapping out of it,” the other girl told her coolly. 

Ty Lee took a step forward and then let out a low hiss, sinking down into a careful sitting position. 

“Here,” Yue said. “Let me take care of it.” She looked worried, swooping down and pulling her water around her fluidly. Ty Lee focused on her, trying to avoid Azula and Zuko, the former who still looked strangely pleased (as if she had  _ liked  _ hurting Ty Lee, a voice whispered) and the latter who looked vaguely sick but trying to hide it, an aggressive expression resting on his face instead.

The water, cool blue, drifted around the reddened skin. Ty Lee watched it slowly fade, marveling at the speed of Yue’s healing water. She could feel the tears threatening to spill over in full force, the need to yell or destroy things strong. She clenched her fists into the mud instead, lip trembling as she tried to choke back the lump in her throat.

“It’s okay,” Zuko said. “We’ll find her.”

“They  _ sold  _ her,” Ty Lee spat, her hair dripping into her eyes.

“She can’t have gone far,” Zuko said, but his voice fell flat at the attempt at comfort. “I’m sure she’s in the Earth Kingdom, isn’t that right?”

“Of course,” the swampbenders said, nodding in unison. “Just sold her about an hour ago. She’ll be in the Earth Kingdom somewhere.”

The Earth Kingdom, all four of them knew, was devastatingly large.

“It’s okay,” Zuko repeated. “We’ll find her.”

Ty Lee started to cry.

* * *

It took them two days to make it out of the swamp, even after stealing—or, more like aggressively borrowing—the skiffs from the palm leafed men. Zuko was relieved to feel the steady rock of water beneath him once again, which almost made him feel guilty when he remembered that Moshi was missing, but also he hadn’t missed flying. Not in the slightest.

Ever since the North Pole, the dynamic that they had so carefully cultivated as a trio had been shattered to pieces. This was less because of their transition to a quartet and more, particularly, because of Azula. Zuko didn’t blame her for being prickly, or closed off—though, really, all he wanted to do was keep her close and keep her safe, but they had never been good at that, had they?—but he had thought, foolishly, that it would pass.

It had been weeks. The month would soon be over, cutting them down to three months to save the world, kill their father, etcetera, and Azula and Ty Lee had not made any progress on firebending, despite Zuko knowing his sister thought Ty Lee was far from the mastery she should have now. (Apparently dancing with dragons and lavabending didn’t automatically qualify someone for that. Zuko had tried to ask his sister if it was like swordsmanship, but he had hardly begun his analogy before she had kicked a blast of fire and yelled at him to leave her alone.)

Zuko was, in fact, glad that Yue was with them. Not that they were exactly having scintillating conversations, or really talking much at all, but he was exhausted from having to play peacekeeper between the two girls, and Yue filled the role alongside him with ease. 

(Zuko really thought that he should talk to her. He knew he had to. The moment at the North Pole had been chaotic and he had been focused on his sister, but when all the adrenaline had died out, he hadn’t known how to ask her again. Ask her if she had understood. If she hated him now. If she thought it was his— _ their _ , a voice in his mind corrected, but Zuko shrugged that off, because he was the firstborn and he was his father’s son, and didn’t the son bear his father’s crimes (or at least, that had been the law in the Fire Nation. If a man committed a crime he could not be tried for, due to death or fleeing, the burden fell on their child instead.)—fault.)

(Wasn’t it his fault?)

He was used to silence. To being alone. He had spent two years out at sea with no one his age and no one he could fall back on. Just a ship and sailors at least twice his age who had tested him for a long time before they thought he was worthy, if they even had thought that in the end. Zuko had, of course, left them too. 

He was used to silence, but he had foolishly let himself grow comfortable in not being alone, and now the silence was killing him, slowly, because the silence equaled distance, and Zuko was alone, even with three other people at his back as they trudged through the Earth Kingdom for the third consecutive day in a row.

“We should take a break,” Ty Lee moaned, shielding her eyes against the dust and sand sent into their faces by a sudden wind. “C’mon Zuko, it’s been hours.”

Zuko consulted the map they had bought off a traveling merchant in a last ditch attempt to navigate. He was beginning to suspect that they had been ripped off, or either completely lost, because he hadn’t passed a ‘grove of orange trees’ or ‘a small village of rocks’ in the last five miles like they should’ve.

“There should be a town up ahead,” he said lamely, reshuffling the map around in his hands.

“Give me that,” Azula grumbled, snatching it from his fingers. Zuko blinked at her in surprise, wondering, for a moment, if she was trying to help, and then only shook his head when she set it on fire and tossed the ashes to the wind, only for the smoke to blow back in their faces once again.

“That was the only direction we had,” he said in annoyance.

“We’re heading north, it’s fine,” she snapped back. This was the gist of their conversations in the last two weeks—disappointment, rebelliousness, and a thick tension leftover in the air that resembled the ozone crackling before lightning hit the ground.

“Is anyone else seeing that?” Ty Lee asked, pointing ahead with her glider lazily. “Or is that a mirage?”

“No, I see it too,” Yue put in quietly. Zuko looked up from where Azula had been glaring at him, and saw the shimmering edge of trees on the horizon, behind a row of huts. 

“There  _ is  _ a village,” he remarked triumphantly. 

“Let’s go,” Ty Lee said, her eyes looking brighter than they had in the past couple days. Zuko was glad to see it; Moshi’s disappearance and the subsequent news that had come with it had dampened her like a bucket of water, cutting off her light, but now a spark had returned. 

“Hold on,” he said. “We don’t know if they’ll be...welcoming.”

“Like the last two, you mean?” Azula cut in nastily, her upper lip curling. The last two villages had ended badly, two in succession. The first because Azula had threatened a shop owner and in the second they had been told, not so kindly, to leave. 

Zuko thought it had less to do with their somewhat suspicious circumstances and more to do with the color of his and Azula’s eyes. 

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Ty Lee said. “Besides, we’re out of water  _ and  _ food. We need to stop.” This she directed at Zuko, as if she knew exactly what he had been mentally debating.

He conceded. “Ty Lee’s right.” He glanced at the three girls; Yue had nervously started to spin the water in her hands, as she was wont to do, and Azula only looked angry, her eyes flinty as she stared at the town, daring it to try and knock her down before they had even reached it. 

“We won’t stay long,” he added. “Just long enough to get supplies.”

“And rest?” Ty Lee asked hopefully.

Zuko chewed on his lip. “Maybe,” he said, but it was a lie; he didn’t think they should stay there. Not just because stopping in one place was dangerous, despite there having been no sign of anyone on their tail, but also because stopping put them further behind schedule. There was too much ground too cover, and the Earth Kingdom was, after all, very large.

“Let’s go,” Ty Lee said, starting off at a quicker pace, and Zuko had no choice but to follow, Yue slipping her water away with a solemn look as they took the rear together. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye; her skin had been tanning, and the sunlight cut golden slivers across the warm brown, her dark eyes narrowed. She had kept the two long braids in front of her, bound with blue, the the rest of her hair had been pulled into a ponytail that trailed down her back. 

(They really were a group, Zuko thought, and far from inconspicuous. There was Zuko with his scar, and his and Azula’s obviously Fire Nation complexions. Then there was Ty Lee, who still hadn’t changed out of her airbender acolyte clothes, and had tattoos that had been gone for a century. And, finally, there was Yue, whose dark skin and white hair shone like a beacon, even among the tanned Earth Kingdom citizens. A firebender, an airbender, a waterbender, and a nonbender who also happened to be wanted both as himself and his alter ego. He was almost glad Moshi wasn’t here, because a sky bison was asking to be knocked out of the sky.)

“Have you been adjusting okay?” he asked. The words fell flat.

Yue glanced at him, startled, her eyes flickering up to Azula and Ty Lee, both of who walked a good ways in front of them, setting a fast pace and still managing to stand completely apart from one another. Two people moving in tandem, completely ignoring one another.

“Yeah,” she managed. “It’s been fine.”

Zuko swallowed and nodded. He had been wanting to ask her about the swamp, about what she had meant, exactly, when she said she had seen him but  _ not him _ . 

However, before he could, they crested the hill and descended into the village. Zuko fell silent, looking around warily and trying not to grab his swords, as Ty Lee had scolded him last time and told him it made him seem hostile. 

“Food,” Ty Lee said quietly, falling back beside them and grabbing Azula as she did so, though the other girl shot her a resentful look and clenched her fists at her side. 

Zuko looked over to where she had discreetly gestured: a small boy manned a stand of vegetables and fruit and what looked to be dried meat—for some reasons that Yue understood, but the rest of them didn’t, dried meat was considered a staple. In the Fire Nation, it was rare to dry food, but he supposed the dusty climate of the Earth Kingdom required it.

He walked over, shifting to conceal his swords more. “How much?” he asked, starting to fold his arms and then remembering that Ty Lee had gently told him that only served to also make him look hostile, so he let them drop to his sides instead, where he fiddled awkwardly with the cloth material of his shirt’s hem.

The boy blinked up at him. “Are you a soldier?” he demanded.

Zuko looked down at him. “No?” he answered.

The boy glared up at him, his expression vicious for what must have been a ten or eleven year old. 

“We’re travelers?” Zuko ventured again. “Just passing through.”

“You don’t look like you’re one of us,” the boy spat. There was a gap between his teeth. “You look like  _ them _ .” 

“Um,” Zuko said. “Can I get something?” He wasn’t exactly following the train of thought. 

“Do you have money?” the boy asked.

“Yeah.”

“Fine. What do you want?”

Zuko scratched his head, then glanced back at the three girls behind him, who were watching him with various forms of amusement on their faces. “Everything?” he asked.

“You have to be  _ specific _ ,” the boy snapped. 

“Just give me how much this is worth,” Zuko said, holding out the bundle of coins they had allocated for food supplies.

The boy’s eyes widened. “Yes, sir,” he said immediately, taking out a bag and beginning to stack vegetables, fruit, and dried meat in it. He could shortchange him, Zuko supposed, but at least they hadn’t haggled him like the last couple times, not that Zuko wasn’t good at cutting a deal.

“Here you go,” the boy said, passing it to him and snatching the coins with his bony fingers. He was thin, Zuko noticed, and half starved. He doubted he looked much better; they had hardly had a hardy diet the last month or so. 

“Thanks,” he said cautiously, watching how the boy’s eyes widened and he squirreled the money away quickly, darting away into the house behind the stand. Turning, Zuko frowned and peered into the sun, watching the dark shapes swaying as they climbed down into the village. It took him a moment too long to realize it was men on rhinos, low to the ground.

“Fuck,” he muttered beneath his breath, shifting the supplies into the bag he had scrounged up a while ago. He hurried back to Ty Lee, Azula, and Yue, seeing that his sister had already spotted them, her eyes sharpening. 

“We should get out of here,” he said.

“Why, who are they?” Ty Lee asked.

“Soldiers,” Zuko responded. “This town is Fire Nation occupied, I don’t know how we didn’t notice.” (Though, looking around, there was nothing to notice, not really. No flags, no obvious signs. But there was no mistaking what the presence of soldiers meant.)

“Let’s fight them,” Azula said, and Zuko gave her a sharp look.

“And what? Let them realize who we are so they can track us down? We can’t just get away anymore, Lala, we don’t have a  _ flying sky bison  _ anymore.”

Ty Lee inhaled, sharply, but Zuko only spared her a glance, before grabbing his sister’s elbow and attempting to drag her away, which was the wrong move, because she violently shook him off, staring up at the approaching soldiers.

“Well well, who do we have here?” one of them leered, and Zuko froze, his back still turned. 

“Looks like some newcomers,” his friend sneered. He felt Yue’s hand slide over his elbow, pinching at the skin slightly.  _ Stay calm. _

“We’re just passing through,” she said, her voice like smooth water.

“Are you,” the first man said. “Pretty things like you, traveling alone?”

Yue laughed, though her fingers were sharp against Zuko’s arm. “We’re not alone, we’re together,” she corrected, her voice icey beneath the fake warmth. 

“That’s terribly dangerous for you.” Zuko heard the thump of boots on the ground, heavy, and he tensed, slowly shifting around slowly, half hidden in the shadows, as the soldier approached their motley group. “You staying the night?”

“No,” Yue said. “We’ll be on our way shortly.”

“A shame,” the soldier murmured. He had come up close, and Zuko could see the breath Yue was holding in her body to keep herself still. “Sure we couldn’t interest you?”

Yue’s smile tightened. “We wouldn’t want to trouble you,” she said, lowering her head and taking a step back.

The soldier grabbed her wrist. 

“Excuse me,” Yue said, her smile frozen on her face as she pulled herself free, taking a step back. “But I’m not interested.”

The soldier stared at her, his eyes narrowed, and then his face twisted into a scowl and he backhanded her across the face. Yue cried out, falling to the ground, and Zuko tried to catch her, grabbing her by the shoulders. 

“You filthy  _ whore _ ,” the soldier started to snarl, and then Azula punched a ball of fire across his face and all hell broke out.

In the chaos, Zuko heaved Yue to her feet, spinning her around and asking, “Are you okay?” though the words got lost in the mayhem.

Her eyes were rimmed red, her hair falling in front of her reddening face, but she nodded once, her face set in a clipped expression as she whirled, water cascading into a wave of ice that shattered as chain hurtled through it, snagging her ankle and sending her slamming into the ground. Zuko drew his swords, blocking an arrow and looking up to see one of the Rhino Riders yanking her across the ground at a startling fast speed. Hissing, he dodged an arrow and scrambled up the side of a house, heaving himself onto the roof and taking one big leap before he had jumped, crashing onto the Rider and stabbing him straight through the heart with one of his dao swords, blood spattering hot across his face. He closed his eyes reflexively, letting out a shuddering breath, and then slid off, turning to see Yue yanking the chain away from her bloody ankle, dust smeared over her skin.

“Are you—” he started to ask, but she grabbed his wrist and yanked him to the ground, her whip of water (which glittered almost silver, Zuko noticed) sailing over his head and slicing the head off an approaching Rider, whose expression turned to shock in the second he still had it, the sword that had been about to pierce Zuko’s heart dropping from his grasp as his body fell apart.

Zuko stared at the head that rolled across the ground. Beside him, Yue made a small noise, before dry heaving on the ground. “I didn’t mean to,” she moaned, looking so stricken and pale that Zuko was hit with a strange urge to hug her, something that had only ever occurred to him with his sister before.

Behind them, Ty Lee screamed, and Zuko’s head jerked up in time to see her get flung into the stall, wood shattering beneath her body. They had taken out two of the Riders, but there were more. Zuko looked at the bodies, then back at the villagers, who disappeared as soon as their eyes met. 

“We need to get out of here,” he said, pulling her roughly to her feet and then wishing he had been gentler when she winced, rubbing at the wrist the soldier had grabbed earlier. The skin would bruise. Zuko hated that it would. 

“A—Lala!” he called, not wanting to use her full name in case something clicked with the soldiers. It didn’t look like they had heard to be on the lookout for the Avatar yet, or the Fire Lord’s wayward children.

She turned in a flash of fiery black hair and blue fire, giving a powered kick in order to flip over in front of them. There was a laugh on her lips that made Zuko still, disconcerted by the reminder of his father’s insanity and his grandfather’s—insanity, he wondered if it was passed down, or built into them, making them destined for failure and delusions as they grew older by their parents. 

(Maybe all the Fire Lords went crazy, in the end. Their secret was appearing to be great men instead.)

Ty Lee spun her staff, redirecting a blast of fire that caused the soldiers to part. 

“To the trees!” Zuko yelled, the air around them thick with heat. He coughed, choking on smoke, and his vision blurred by the tear jerk reaction. Slicing through another arrow, he ran low to the ground, feeling Yue and Azula breathless at his side, white hair bouncing and gold eyes glinting as Zuko cut a path through the streets, the two of them flanking him as Ty Lee brought up the rear.

A rider-less rhino leaped in front of them and Zuko knocked it out with brunt force, unable to bring himself to kill it. Animals were innocent, after all, and just as subject to a human’s cruelty as the rest of them were.

They hit the trees, and an arrow skimmed his shoulder, embedding itself into the tree trunk inches from his face. Zuko dared a glanced back, seeing the soldiers scream in frustration, before he dove into the tangle of green, abruptly cutting off all other noise.

For a minute, they simply ran, breathing sharply, the leaves crinkling beneath their feet. This forest was entirely green, speaking of a lush summer, and Zuko inhaled the familiar smell of nature, feeling his heartbeat steady.

Then his feet hit the ground and something shifted beneath him, a sharp snap sending him hurtling upward in a confusion of limbs and yelps. Zuko yelped, his sheath digging sharply into the softness of his sides, and found himself swinging upside down, the forest floor littered with leaves and moss far, far below.

He swallowed, craning his neck around. Yue was pressed against him, her arm bleeding—they were encircled in a metal contraption. It looked like it had been a hunting trap. It was large, but not large enough for them to be comfortable, their bodies folded up. Next to them, Azula and Ty Lee had been trapped by one attached to a neighboring tree, swinging just out of reach from them. Azula had started to twist, lashing out, but it looked like Ty Lee had said something to her that had made her stop, probably involving the fact that setting the trees on fire would not make metal more malleable. 

“You good?” he asked Yue. She was trembling, tears in her eyes.

“Not really?” she whispered. “But I will be.”

Zuko didn’t doubt that. He smiled at her, but it was cut off quickly by the sound of branches snapping on the ground beneath them. He twisted his neck, wincing, to see a boy appear from the edges of the clearing, staring up at them with a grin as he chewed on a piece of barley.

“Well,” he said, looking up at them with a twisted grin. “What have we caught now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there is the beginning of book two! I'm really excited to know what you guys thought of it - especially Yue's POV. I know everyone is pretty much ooc at this point, but it is an alternative universe, so there. I'm also starting to ship Zuko and Yue myself...whoops. 
> 
> Anyways, leaving a comment or kudo would make my day!! I love seeing your theories and reactions. I'm also on [ tumblr ](https://astarlightmonbebe.tumblr.com/)if you want to tag me in anything, or ask something. Until I update again, then.


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